Doha Film Festival returns this year with a wider spread of international and regional titles, reflecting Qatar’s efforts to define the event’s place within an increasingly active regional landscape.
Running from November 20 to 28, the festival will put on public events and screenings across Katara Cultural Village, Msheireb, the Museum of Islamic Art and Lusail Boulevard, with a programme shaped largely by stories about conflict, displacement and shifting identities.
The festival opens with The Voice of Hind Rajab, Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s reconstruction of the final phone call of five-year-old Hind Rajab during an Israeli military assault in Gaza. Supported by Doha Film Institute, it is a stark choice for opening night and sets the tone for a line-up in which Gaza, Sudan and Libya appear prominently.
This year’s selection places notable emphasis on stories from Palestine and Sudan. Tarzan and Arab Nasser’s Once Upon a Time in Gaza (November 25 and 27) revisits the Gaza of 2007 through the intersecting stories of a student, a drug dealer and a corrupt police officer, while Kamal Aljafari’s With Hasan in Gaza (November 22 and 24) assembles fragments of memory and disappearance into a portrait of a place that feels increasingly inaccessible.
Sudan features strongly as well. Khartoum (November 24 and 26), made collectively by Sudanese filmmakers, follows five residents displaced by the current war, while Suzannah Mirghani’s Cotton Queen (November 26 and 27) looks at a village drawn into a dispute over genetically modified seeds through the eyes of a teenage girl. Together, these films form one of the clearest thematic threads in this year’s programme.
International selections take the line-up in a range of tonal directions. Ali Asgari’s Divine Comedy (November 25 and 27) follows a filmmaker navigating censorship and bureaucracy in Iran, approached with a dry humour characteristic of the director’s work. Chie Hayakawa’s Renoir (November 23 and 26) offers a quieter rhythm – a gently observed drama set in 1987 Tokyo, centred on an 11-year-old girl navigating illness and distance within her family. These films broaden the programme without shifting its underlying focus on personal stories unfolding within larger social pressures.
Short films make up a substantial part of the schedule, with this year’s international competition drawn from more than 1,600 submissions. The selection includes the Palme d’Or-winning I’m Glad You’re Dead Now, works from Iraq and Morocco, and The Thief, the first film at the festival from East Greenland. Screenings run throughout the week across multiple venues.
The Made in Qatar section remains the most distinctly local part of the festival. This year’s 10 shorts by Qatari and Qatar-based filmmakers explore themes such as family memory, personal loss and cultural change. Among them are Theatre of Dreams, which revisits the early women’s national football team; Project Aisha, centred on a mother-daughter dynamic after an accident; and Villa 187, a reflection on migration and identity. The programme provides a snapshot of the directions younger filmmakers in the country are exploring, with screenings on November 27 and 28.
Alongside the main programme, Doha hosts several special screenings, including Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers (November 21), Jim Sheridan’s Re-Creation (November 22), Andy Mundy-Castle’s Shoot the People (November 25) and the world premiere of the Qatari feature Sa3oud Wainah? (November 23 and 25). Visiting guests this year include Steven Soderbergh, Michaela Coel, Ramy Youssef, Hiam Abbas and Saleh Bakri.
Beyond film, the festival includes a week of concerts featuring artists such as Saint Levant, Yasiin Bey, Elyanna, Zeyne and Gustavo Santaolalla, while Geekdom – a pop-culture and gaming event – runs concurrently in Lusail Boulevard. Outdoor screenings at MIA Park and West Bay continue the festival’s more accessible strand.
