Arab Film Festival

Founded in 2011, the Arab Film Festival (AAF) is the only regular festival in the UK that looks at the breadth and scope of cinema produced in and inspired by the Arab world.

The festival was founded to create a platform for emerging and established filmmakers producing cinema within the wider Arab region to circulate their films on a stage that dialogued with the international film circuit.

It seeks to create an ecology for the distribution of Arab cinema in the UK, as well as a meeting point for local and national audiences to dialogue around the wider issues that constitute 'world cinema'. 

The Arab Film Festival is directed by Omar Kholeif, Curator at FACT and was initiated by FACT in collaboration with the city's long-standing Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival (LAAF).  

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4 - 10 July 2011

In 2011, FACT celebrated the first ever Arab Film Festival, with major support from the UK Film Council. 

The first Arab Film Festival examined the history and politics of the Arabic-speaking world through the eyes of renegade filmmakers such as the late great Egyptian director Youssef Chahine, as well as his contemporaries such as Yousry Nasrallah, Marianne Khoury and Khaled El Hagar, whose films exposed the culture and identity of the fluctuating Arabic-speaking countries. 

The seven-day festival included UK premieres of The Man Who Sold The World by Moroccan/Spanish siblings, The Noury Brothers, and Marianne Khoury and Mustapha Hasnaoui's documentary, Zelal, the first film to tackle mental illness in Egypt, alongside a mini retrospective of the auteur Youssef Chahine, which featured re-mastered classics, Cairo Station and Alexandria, Why?.

The programme also included discussions with significant Arab filmmakers, such as Imad and Swel Noury, Egyptian/British icon, Khaled El Hagar and writers Malu Halassa,  Brian Whitaker and Omar El Khairy.

2011 Arab Film Festival Full Schedule 

4 July - Zindeeq (Dir. Michel Kheifi, 2009)

5 July - Khalil Joreige & Joana Hadjithomas Double Bill: The Lost Film (2003) and Around the Pink House (1999) 

6 July - Little Dreams/Ahlam Saghira (Dir. Khaled El Hagar, 1993) and Zelal (Dir. Marianne Khoury and Mustapha Hasnaoui, 2010/2011) 

7 July - Microphone (Dir. Ahmed Abdullah, 2010)

8 July - The Man Who Sold the World (Dir. Swel and Imad Noury, 2009) and The Time That Remains / Al Zaman Al Baqi (Dir. Elia Sulieman, 2009) 

9 July -  Mercedes (Dir. Yousry Nasrallah, 1993) and The Land/Al Ard (Dir. Youssef Chahine, 1969)

10 July -  Cairo Station/Bal Al Hadeed (Dir. Youssef Chahine, 1958) and  Alexandria Why?/Iskinderiyah leh?(Dir. Youssef Chahine, 1979) 

6 - 12 July 2012

Continuing its partnership with the Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival, the Arab Film Festival, the AAF - the only UK film festival programme of its kind, returns for its second edition boasting an array of thought provoking UK premieres for audiences in Liverpool and beyond.

This year's festival is focused on emerging creative talent working in the region, showcasing the work of the filmmakers who will put Arab cinema on the international map. 

The seven-day festival includes more UK premieres than before, including the first UK showing of Khaled El Hagar's El Shooq/Lust (2011), a pre-revolutionary tale of religious tensions in Alexandria, Egypt.

2012 Arab Film Festival Full Schedule

Pre-Festival Double Bill, 12 June - I Want to See/Je Veix Voir (Dir. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, 2008) and Incendies (Dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2011)

6 July - The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni/Ikhifa'aat Soad Hosni Alt-thalathat (Dir. Rania Stephen, 2011)

9 July - Nomad's Home (Dir. Iman Kamel, 2010) and From Palestine with Love (Dir. Mahasen Nasser-Eldin and Camilla Magid, 2010) 

9 July - Axis of Light (Dir. Pia Getty, 2010) 

10 July - I've Heard Stories Part 1 (Dir. Marwa Arsanios, 2008) and VHS Kahloucha (Dir. Nejib Belkadhi, 2006)

11 July - Lust/El Shooq (Dir. Khaled El Hagar, 2011)

12 July - Okay, Enough, Goodbye/Tayeb Khalas Yalla (Dir. Rania Attieh and Daniel Garcia, 2011)