The Official Oscar entry for Morocco, Abla runs a modest local bakery from her home in Casablanca where she lives alone with her 8-year-old daughter Warda. Their routine of housework and homework is interrupted one day by a knock on the door. It is Samia, a young woman looking for a job and a roof over her head. The little girl is immediately taken with the newcomer, but her mother initially refuses to allow a pregnant stranger into their home. Gradually,...

Beshay – a man cured of leprosy – has never left the leper colony in the Egyptian desert where he has lived snce childhood. Following the death of his wife, he finally decides to go in search of his roots. With his meagre possessions strapped to a donkey cart, he sets out. Quickly joined by Obama, the Nubian orphan he has taken under his wing, Beshay will cross Egypt and confront the world with all its sorrows, its hardships and moments of grace,...

Winner of the Lion of the Future Award for Best Debut Feature at the Venice Film Festival, it is a visually sumptuous coming-of-death fable. During her son's naming ceremony, a Sheikh predicts that Sakina's child will die at the age of twenty. Haunted by this prophecy, Sakina becomes overly protective of her son Muzamil, who grows up knowing about his fate. As Muzamil escapes Sakina's ever-watchful eye, he encounters friends, ideas, and challenges...

Based on a thrilling true story, **Sundance** Award-winner THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT is a crime noir that plays “*like an Arabic riff on Chinatown*” (***Entertainment Weekly***). Weeks before the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, Noredin, a police officer in Cairo, investigates a pop singer’s murder at the Nile Hilton Hotel. What initially appears to be a crime of passion turns into a complicated case involving the power elite of Egypt. When Noredin...

Jordan, 1967. The world is alive with change: brimming with reawakened energy, new styles, music and an infectious sense of hope. In Jordan, a different kind of change is underway as tens of thousands of refugees pour across the border from Palestine. Having been separated from his father in the chaos of war, Tarek, and his mother Ghaydaa, are amongst this latest wave of refugees. Placed in temporary refugee camps made up of tents and prefab houses...

Bursting with mordant wit and alive with urgent real-life dramatic energy, Rashid Masharawi's Laila's birthday is a "fleet, dark urban comedy," (New York Times) that "moves at a brisk clip, ticking incidents like a meter on overtime" (Time Out New York).

17-year-old Naama spends most of her free time drinking and partying in the hopes of escaping from her parents' constant bickering, worsened by the recent disappearance of her AWOL soldier sister. When a free-spirited new girl shows up at school, Naama falls deeply in love for the first time and the intensity of the experience at once confuses her and gives her life new meaning.

AMIRA, a 17 year old Palestinian, was conceived with the smuggled sperm of her imprisoned father, Nawar. Although their relationship since birth has been restricted to prison visits, he remains her hero. His absence in her life is overcompensated with love and affection from those surrounding her. But when a failed attempt to conceive another child reveals Nawar’s infertility, Amira’s world turns upside down.

A steadfast young doctor’s run for city council sweeps up her family and community as they struggle to accept their town’s first female candidate in Haifaa Al Mansour’s revealing look at the changing roles of women in Saudi Arabia.

In the midst of a terrorist strike, 9 Muslim women at a crossroads gather for an unforgettable night. In a country fraught with danger and strife, the women reveal their heartbreaks, their tragedies, and their hopes for the future.