Five Films From MENA Set for Cinema du Reel 2026 Competition
Paris, March 21–28, 2026
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Cinéma du Réel has announced the 37 documentaries selected for its 2026 Competition, including five titles connected to the Middle East and North Africa.
Two of the five will screen as world premieres: An Incomplete Calendar by Sanaz Sohrabi, and The Cow’s Complaint by Mahdy Abo Bahat and Abdo Zin Eldin.
The remaining three will be presented as French premieres: Baisanos by Andrés Khamis Giacoman and Francisca Khamis Giacoman, Casting for a Film, Ihsan’s Diary by Lamia Joreige, and The Weary Hours of Two Labs Assistants by Burak Çevik.
Together, these films bring rare perspectives shaped by lived experience, mixing documentary craft with bold artistic choices, and carrying voices that feel both local and widely resonant.
AN INCOMPLETE CALENDAR
Director: Sanaz Sohrabi
Countries: Canada, Iran, Turkey, Venezuela
Runtime: 77 minutes
Format: World premiere
This film offers a different and surprising narrative about oil issues and the “Third World” project. It is a multimedia narrative that depicts artistic representation in the post-colonial era. Using archival images and musical records such as Rhymes and Songs for OPEC, recorded in 1980 by the Concert Choir of the Central University of Venezuela, the film reflects stories around Arab oil companies.
By creatively weaving songs and rarely heard archives together, Sanaz Sohrabi presents a different account of oil, national sovereignty, and its impact on international relations. The film creates a space to challenge topics such as the artwork itself, the making of art, and its mission to stay in dialogue with the surrounding world.
Sohrabi is a filmmaker born in Iran, also known as a researcher and artist. Her films are often shown in art festivals, museums, and contemporary art spaces. Her projects generally focus on geopolitics and the post-colonial world, where memory and the archive play an important role. In this path, she uses creative approaches in photography and film.
She is known for a documentary trilogy about oil and visual culture, and AN INCOMPLETE CALENDAR is the latest work in this series. The other two works are The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers and A Loss of Something Ever Felt I. Like the latest film, they blend documentary and politics with the lived experience of making art.
BAISANOS
Directors: Andrés Khamis Giacoman and Francisca Khamis Giacoman
Countries: Chile, Palestine, Spain
Runtime: 14 minutes
Format: French premiere
This film portrays the Baisanos, the loyal and passionate supporters of Club Deportivo Palestino. The club belongs to Chile’s first division football scene and was founded in 1920 by Palestinian immigrants. The two narrators of the film, Lina Morvin and Mohammad Abdalnaim Qader Odeh, reflect Chile and Palestine. Through their stories, they show identity and the meaning of return through language and culture.
Baisanos presents an image of football beyond sport: a link between lands, between past and future, between community and resistance. It also shows how football, as a symbol of shared heritage and resilience, pushes different diasporas to shape, and be shaped by, the place where they find a new home. The word Baisanos comes from “paisano”, meaning “compatriot” or “of the same roots”. It is a word used within the Palestinian-Chilean community to refer to solidarity.
Andrés and Francisca Khamis Giacoman are a brother and sister from the Palestinian diaspora in Chile. In their first joint work, they explore migrant identity, reflecting their lived experience and their ongoing engagement with questions of identity. Andrés is based in Barcelona and works as a film editor. He focuses on migration issues and founded Trabaja Global. Francisca, based in Amsterdam, is an artist who revisits migration stories through performances, installations, and audiovisual works.
CASTING FOR A FILM, IHSAN’S DIARY
Director: Lamia Joreige
Country: Lebanon
Runtime: 48 minutes
Format: French premiere
Known as a video installation, this work is a documentary that shows the casting process for Lamia Joreige’s upcoming feature film titled Jerusalem: The Diary of Ihsan Turjman. Her feature is adapted from a manuscript belonging to a Jerusalem soldier in the Ottoman army in 1915 during World War I, developed in collaboration with Palestinian writer Majd Kayyal.
The film focuses on Ihsan’s diary and his daily struggles during World War I, portraying challenges such as famine, illness, political insecurity, and uncertainty about the future. At the same time, it shows his dreams of education and his platonic love. At the end of the war, he is murdered.
In this documentary in Beirut, Rana Ziadane and Dana El Sharif audition for the role of Thurayya. Aly Harkous and Omar Ahmed audition for the role of Ihsan, and Imad Alwaneh auditions for the role of Mohieddine. They perform scenes in different takes, and even discuss various issues while working.
Lamia Joreige, born in Lebanon, is a visual artist and filmmaker working in Beirut. She uses a combination of archival elements and imagination, reflecting individual stories alongside society and history. Her works have been shown in many institutions.
She is also one of the founders and directors of Beirut Art Center, a dedicated space for contemporary art in Lebanon.
Other films by her include Object of War and And the Living Is Easy. Her documentaries are also well known, including Here and Perhaps Elsewhere.
THE COW’S COMPLAINT
Directors: Mahdy Abo Bahat and Abdo Zin Eldin
Countries: Egypt, France, United Kingdom
Runtime: 95 minutes
Format: World premiere
This feature-length documentary has been released as a co-production between Egypt, France, and the United Kingdom. Previously, in 2023, Mahdy Abo Bahat and Abdo Zin Eldin collaborated on an experimental documentary short titled Goose’s Excuse (Ozr el wezzah), which appeared at international festivals such as Oberhausen and the BFI London Film Festival.
The works of these two filmmakers approach rural life and spiritual elements through an artistic lens. They reflect the duo’s tendency toward documentary-making that blends lived experience and art, through the layering of sound and image.
THE WEARY HOURS OF TWO LABS ASSISTANTS
Director: Burak Çevik
Countries: Turkey, Germany, Croatia, United Kingdom
Runtime: 22 minutes
Format: French premiere
This short drama is a creative work about the coexistence of logical research and intuitive understanding. Two lab assistants, at midnight, examine an unknown substance using specific devices and methods. During a break, one of them makes Turkish coffee, and their night changes. The process turns into a kind of fortune-telling, and by moving from analysis toward intuition, they imagine another way of knowing and another kind of science.
This short film was first shown worldwide in the Forum Expanded section of the Berlinale. It begins with a laboratory and scientific atmosphere, and as time passes and fatigue increases, it shifts from data-driven thinking to imagination. This shift becomes the core of its visual experience.
The film raises questions about the limits of logic and the role of intuition in knowledge, and it subtly tells this through the context of Turkish culture and society.
Burak Çevik has a background in producing experimental and artistic works. Other films by him, such as The Pillar of Salt (2018), Belonging (2019), Forms of Forgetting (2023), and Nothing in Its Place (2024), have been screened at the Berlinale. His works study memory and human experience, and are known for their unconventional forms.
Cinéma du Reel, founded in 1978 and organized by the Bibliothèque publique d’information (Bpi) in France, has long been a home for documentaries that take risks. Each year, it presents around 200 films across several sections, from emerging voices to established filmmakers.
The 48th edition runs in Paris from March 21 to March 28, 2026. In competition, these five films bring Middle East and North Africa stories in different forms and textures, reminding us how documentary cinema can still surprise us, and still make us look again.
Official competition list: https://www.cinemadureel.org/en/48th-edition-d-39-films-in-competition/
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