Contemporary Arab Cinema returns to the JBFC this July for its 14th edition

The series is co-presented with the Brooklyn Academy of Music

July 22–28 Jacob Burns Film Center
July 15–23 BAM

This series is a labor of love—born from a simple, urgent belief that Arab filmmakers must be the ones telling our own stories. In a moment when so much feels misread or misunderstood, these films insist on being heard in their own voice. They don’t try to explain the region as much as invite you to feel its contradictions and its quiet resilience. This year’s selection—marking the series’ 14th year and 7th at BAM—travels from Morocco to Lebanon, Egypt to Saudi Arabia, Palestine to Iraq, moving between the intimate and the expansive, the fragile and the defiant. Together, they offer something rare: a space where we can see ourselves, and be seen, on our own terms. Coming back to Jacob Burns Film Center this year feels especially meaningful. This is where the series first began, and returning for its 14th edition carries both memory and a sense of continuity. This return is not just to a place, but to a shared commitment to storytelling that feels urgent, human, and true. I am genuinely excited to be “coming back home.”

—Series programmer Lina Matta

Co-presented with

Selections Include:

A Sad and Beautiful World (2025) Dir. Cyril Aris

With Mounia Akl, Hasan Akil, Julia Kassar
110min; DCP
In Arabic with English subtitles

Wednesday, July 22 at 7:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Thursday, July 23 at 7:00pm (BAM)
Followed by a Q&A with director Cyril Aris
Opening Night reception at Take 3 Wine Bar and Café (JBFC) after the 7/22 screening.
Across three decades of passion, loss, and hope, Nino and Yasmina are bound by a magnetic  relationship. Torn between love and survival, the reunited childhood sweethearts must decide whether to build a family and seek happiness in Lebanon, or leave their home amid the country’s unfolding tragedies. A heartfelt portrayal of resilience, A Sad and Beautiful World made its world premiere at Venice Days, where it won the People’s Choice Award.

The Voice of Hind Rajab (2025) Dir. Kaouther Ben Hania

With Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel, Clara Khoury
89min; DCP
In Arabic with English subtitles

Thursday, July 23 at 4:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Wednesday, July 22 at 7:00pm (BAM)

Calling for help from inside a car under heavy Israeli military fire in Gaza, Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl, reached countless listeners around the world after recordings of her desperate pleas were released online. This new film, made by Academy Award nominee Kaouther Ben Hania (Four Daughters) in collaboration with Hind’s family and the Palestine Red Crescent Society, combines archival audio with dramatic recreations of the emergency workers at the call center as they try to dispatch rescuers. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2025 Venice Film Festival and Best International Feature Film nominee at the 2026 Academy Awards, this powerful film compels us to face this tragedy with open eyes.

Calle Málaga (2025) Dir. Maryam Touzani

With Carmen Maura, Marta Etura, Ahmed Boulane, María Alfonsa Rosso
116min; DCP
In Spanish and Arabic with English subtitles

Thursday, July 23 at 7:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Friday, July 17 at 6:00pm (BAM)

“Maura’s performance makes Maria Angeles so magnetic and eccentric — earthily practical on some matters, dizzily irrational on others, and sympathetically true to herself on all fronts.” – Guy Lodge, Variety

Maria Angeles, a 79 year-old Spanish woman, lives alone in Tangier, Morocco enjoying her daily routine. But her life is turned upside down when her daughter arrives from Madrid to sell the apartment she has always called home. Determined to stay, she does everything she can to get her apartment and belongings back and, unexpectedly, rediscovers love and sensuality along the way.

Hijra (2025) Dir. Shahad Ameen

With Lamar Faden, Khairia Nazmi, Naif Al-Daferi, Baraa Alem
115min; DCP
In Arabic with English subtitles

Friday, July 24 at 4:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Tuesday, July 21 at 7:00pm (BAM)

Followed by a Q&A with producer Ali Jbara Al-Darraji

A journey to Mecca for a grandmother and her two granddaughters is interrupted when the eldest sister disappears, sending the remaining duo on a search across the Kingdom in this intergenerational road-trip drama about family tensions, buried secrets, and unexpected bonds between Saudi women. Hijra premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, where it won the NETPAC Award for Best Asian Film.

Bouchra (2025) Dir. Meriem Bennani & Orian Barki

With Meriem Bennani, Fatim-Zahra Alami, Yto Barrada, Dounia Berrada, Orian Barki
83min; DCP
In Moroccan Arabic, French, and English with English subtitles

Friday, July 24 at 7:15pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Monday, July 20 at 7:00pm (BAM)

Deeply felt, surprisingly sexy, and formally adventurous, the feature debut from acclaimed visual artists Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki (best known together from their 2020 web series 2 Lizards) forges new ground that “will make it a classic of queer cinema for years to come” (Next Best Picture). With a lived-in granularity and unmistakable visual style, Bouchra is a singular portrait effortlessly toeing the line between documentary, visual art, and resonant family drama.

Wrestling with writer’s block for her first film, Bouchra, a queer Moroccan jackal living in NYC starts having difficult yet overdue phone calls with her mother in Casablanca. Balancing the precarity of working as an artist in the city, the rift in her identity between her two homes, and an array of friendships and romantic interests, Bouchra’s emotional reckoning with her mother and herself becomes her path to expression.

Happy Birthday (2025) Dir. Sarah Goher

With Nelly Karim, Doha Ramadan, Sherif Salama, Hanan Motawie
91min; DCP
In Arabic with English subtitles

Saturday, July 25 at 1:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Sunday, July 19 at 6:00pm (BAM)

Eight-year-old Toha works as a maid for a wealthy family in Cairo, and is set on hosting a successful birthday party for her best friend: her employer’s daughter. She soon discovers the social hierarchy that divides them in this poignant debut reflecting class schisms in contemporary Cairo. Happy Birthday made its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won Best International Narrative Feature, Best Screenplay in an International Narrative Feature, and the Nora Ephron Award.

Do You Love Me (2025) Dir. Lana Daher

76min; DCP
In Arabic and English with English subtitles

Saturday, July 25 at 4:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Saturday, July 18 at 6:00pm (BAM)

“Deeply moving… Daher weaves an impressionistic narrative from movies, TV clips, home videos, photography, oral testimony and pop music.”—Gothamist

A love letter to Beirut, this playful and personal journey through Lebanon’s audiovisual memory spans 70 years of film, TV, home videos, and photography exploring the Lebanese collective psyche—marked by joy and intimacy, destruction and loss. Through the eyes of citizens, filmmakers, and artists, the film reconstructs a fragmented history in a country without a national archive, celebrating creative expression as both resistance, renewal, and a way to preserve memory. Do You Love Me had its New York Premiere at New Directors/New Films 2026, and its world premiere at Venice Days.

A Matter of Life and Death (2025) Dir. Anas Ba-Tahaf

With Sarah Taibah, Yaqoub Al-Farhan
115min; DCP
In Arabic with English subtitles

 Saturday, July 25 at 7:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Saturday, July 18 at 8:30pm (BAM)

“[O]ne of the quirkiest local romantic comedies to come out of Saudi Arabia since the lifting of its 35-year cinema ban in 2017.” — Deadline

 Haya grew up in the shadow of a curse’s promise that she would die at 30. After a series of failed attempts to end her life—an effort to take her fate into her own hands—she crosses paths with a brilliant but emotionally withdrawn surgeon. Youssef, who suffers from an abnormally slow heartbeat and only truly feels alive when he’s operating and holding a scalpel, might be just who Haya has been looking for. Her request that Youssef kill her kicks off a flowering relationship, and a surprisingly uplifting exploration of the existential struggles that plague so many on the precipice of entering their thirties.

Cotton Queen (2025) Dir. Suzannah Mirghani

With Mihad Murtada, Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud, Talaat Fareed, Haram Bisheer
94min; DCP
In Arabic with English subtitles

Sunday, July 26 at 1:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Thursday, July 16 at 7:00pm (BAM)

In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, teenage Nafisa is raised on heroic tales of battling British colonizers told by her grandmother, the village matriarch Al-Sit. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa becomes the center of a power play to determine the future of the village. Awakening to her own strength, Nafisa sets out to save the cotton fields—and herself. Neither she nor her community will ever be the same again.

The Stories (2025) Dir. Abu Bakr Shawky

With Nelly Karim, Amir El-Masry, and Valerie Pachner
120min; DCP
In Arabic, German, and English with English subtitles

Sunday, July 26 at 4:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Sunday, July 19 at 8:30pm (BAM)

When aspiring Egyptian pianist Ahmed finds a pen pal in Austrian Liz, their blossoming relationship encourages the former to focus on his ambition of performing a concert during a tumultuous time for the nation. Based on the actual meeting of director Shawky’s parents, this combination of narrative vignettes interspersed with archival footage serves as a decade and nation-spanning time capsule of love in the seventies.

The President’s Cake (2025) Dir. Hasan Hadi

With Baneen Ahmed Nayyef, Waheeda Thabet, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
105min; DCP
In Arabic with English subtitles

Monday, July 27 at 7:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Friday, July 17 at 8:45pm (BAM)

While people across 1990s Iraq struggle to survive the war and food shortages, President Saddam Hussein requires each school in the country to prepare a cake to celebrate his birthday. Despite her efforts to avoid getting picked, 9-year-old Lamia is chosen among her classmates, and must use her wits and imagination to gather the scarcely-available ingredients in this directorial debut that earned the 2025 Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

El Sett (2025) Dir. Marwan Hamed

With Mona Zaki, Mohamed Farag, Tamer Nabil, Sayed Ragab
162min; DCP
In Arabic with English subtitles

Tuesday, July 28 at 7:00pm (Jacob Burns Film Center)
Wednesday July 15 at 7:00pm (BAM)

Dubbed “Egypt’s fourth pyramid,” Umm Kalthum was one of the most globally adored singers of the 20th century, and Egypt’s leading musical voice. In this sprawling biopic, Hamed centers Kalthum’s final sickness-plagued performance as a venue for a trip down memory lane, exploring her humble beginnings and the ensuing seven decades of triumph, failure, love, and all that informed one of the most enduring careers in the history of contemporary music.

About BAM

A world-class home for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas, BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) is North America’s oldest performing arts center, showcasing the work of emerging artists and modern icons.

For more than 160 years, BAM has been a thriving, urban multi-arts complex renowned for presenting an unparalleled roster of visionary and cutting-edge dance, theater, music, opera, visual arts, literature, and film. Attracting more than 750,000 people annually to its home in Brooklyn, BAM provides a welcoming cultural stage and meeting place for global and local communities of all backgrounds. BAM’s distinctive multi-theater campus is alive year-round with inspired new engagements and signature programs including the renowned Next Wave (one of the world’s most influential festivals of contemporary performing arts, founded in 1983), the iconic DanceAfrica, an acclaimed repertory film program, and literary, archival, educational and humanities programs. For more information visit BAM.org.