Cinéma de Mounira's 2026 Season Belongs to Emerging Arab Curators

For the first time, Cinéma de Mounira's Monday night film programming will be entirely in the hands of emerging curators. Paris-based initiative Kalam Aflam announces the return of its weekly screenings at the Institut Français d'Égypte, beginning May 4th at 7 PM and running every Monday through December.

Kalam Aflam's Program for Programmers initiative trains the next generation of young Arab film curators. Now, for the first time, these young curators will put their training into practice, each curating a four-session block that explores a theme of their choosing. This year's curations plan to explore our relationship to our soil, our bodies, our people, and our cities.

"For over three years, Kalam Aflam has been championing young and emerging talents from the Mashreq to the Maghreb," said Hayat Aljowaily, Founder and Director of Kalam Aflam. "With the Program for Programmers, we wanted to extend this work to those who build the infrastructure for these artists — the programmers, the curators, the people who decide which stories get seen and how. We are incredibly proud of this cohort of exceptional young programmers, and we cannot wait to give them the floor."

Founded in Paris, Kalam Aflam seeks to foster a community for emerging Arab creatives and to train the future generation of film curators, with sessions covering curatorial methodology, platform strategy, regional and global perspectives, and audience engagement.

The 2026 cohort unites five participants from across the Arab world. Ahmed Hussein Saad is an independent filmmaker who explores the human condition in his native Alexandria. Cairo native Farida Ezzat is a medicine-trained film programmer who bridges cinema and health. Muhammad Rabei Hassan, from the Red Sea, seeks to protect the filmmaker's vision while developing narratives that treat the environment as an active cinematic force.

Omar Dabbous is an Egyptian-Omani-Palestinian filmmaker and film programmer who works across commercial, documentary and film programming initiatives. Rym Jalil is an Afro-Egyptian filmmaker and writer whose work explores the lived experiences of dark-skinned and Black communities in Egypt.

Kalam Aflam operates across Cairo, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Milan, Vienna and Marrakech. The Program for Programmers initiative is funded by the European Union in Egypt in cooperation with EUNIC Egypt. With five curators and weekly sessions, the 2026 season marks a new chapter for both Kalam Aflam and the future of Arab film programming.