El Gouna Film Festival Opens Its Ninth Edition With Isabelle Huppert's All About Corinne

The ninth edition of the El Gouna Film Festival opens today in the Red Sea resort town of El Gouna, Egypt, beginning eight days of screenings, industry panels and special events that run through October 23. The festival has chosen a pointedly self-aware film to open with: All About Corinne, the French comedy directed by Marc Fitoussi and starring Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Kiberlain — a film about the movie business itself, screened for an audience made up largely of the people who work in it.

All About Corinne, whose French title is Ni vue, ni connue — roughly, neither seen nor known — stars Huppert as Corinne Maclou, a background actress who has spent her career in minor roles while remaining convinced that her breakthrough is still coming. An unexpected encounter with the renowned actress Sandrine Kiberlain, played by Kiberlain herself, turns into an unlikely friendship and gives Corinne new hope of acceptance inside the established French film industry. The film, produced by Caroline Bonmarchand, premiered in August at the Locarno Film Festival and opened theatrically in France earlier this month, making El Gouna one of its first major festival stops of the autumn.

Festival leadership has been explicit about why this film got the opening slot. Artistic director Andrew Mohsen described the selection as deliberate: a story set inside the film industry itself, chosen to resonate with both the professionals and the cinephiles in the opening-night audience, and anchored by what he characterised as one of Huppert's most sincere performances — made more layered by the fact that she is playing an actress within the film. Executive director Amr Mansi, a co-founder of the festival, framed the choice in broader terms, saying an opening film like this sets the tone for an edition built around universal human stories of ambition, struggle and belonging. Fitoussi, for his part, has described the film as a story about perseverance that can speak to anyone who has chased a goal and met rejection along the way.

Joanna Hogg leads the narrative jury

The competition at the heart of the festival will be judged by a narrative jury presided over by British director Joanna Hogg, known for The Souvenir and The Eternal Daughter and regarded as one of the United Kingdom's leading auteurs. Hogg will also give a masterclass titled Life Into Film during the festival. Joining her on the narrative panel are Egyptian actress Nahed El Sebaie, Egyptian composer Khaled Hammad — whose three-decade career includes The Yacoubian Building — Iraqi-Kurdish filmmaker Shawkat Amin Korki, and Turkish director Yeşim Ustaoğlu.

The festival's other competitions have their own juries. The feature documentary competition, which also decides the Green Star award for the best film addressing environmental issues, is presided over by the Swiss-Iraqi filmmaker and artist known as Samir, joined by filmmakers and industry figures including Aboozar Amini, producer Julie Frères, Zurich Film Festival director Reta Guetg and editor Gladys Joujou. The short films jury brings together Saudi director Meshal AlJaser, Tunisian director Amel Guellaty and Greek actor-director Christos Passalis.

What is at stake

The headline prize is the El Gouna Golden Star for best narrative film, which carries $50,000, shared between the winning film's director and main producer. Below it sit the Silver Star at $25,000, the Bronze Star at $15,000, and a $20,000 award for the best Arab narrative film, alongside acting honours for best actor and best actress. For filmmakers from the region especially, those sums are meaningful production money, and the festival has built its identity since its founding in 2017 — by Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris, his brother Samih, Amr Mansi and partners — around connecting Egyptian and Arab filmmakers with an international audience and industry.

One of the edition's notable premieres underlines that regional mission: Dear Ajayi, Nigeria's official Oscar entry, will receive its North African premiere at El Gouna. A Nigerian film arriving in Egypt as its country's Academy Awards submission, screening for a largely Arab and international industry audience, is exactly the kind of cross-border programming the festival was created to host. The festival also continues to run its CineGouna programmes supporting Egyptian and Arab filmmakers with funding, forums and market access alongside the public screenings.

El Gouna sits roughly 250 miles south of Cairo, and the festival has survived a turbulent decade — including a cancelled edition in 2022 and a postponement in 2023 — to reach this ninth edition under executive director Amr Mansi and artistic director Andrew Mohsen. The week ahead will test whether All About Corinne's gentle, insider opening sets the right register for a festival that mixes glamour with genuine industry business. The Golden Star verdict arrives at the close on October 23. Follow our festival and film coverage through Movies, explore more titles in Browse, and keep up with the day's entertainment stories in the news feed.