One of the biggest film events in the world, the Toronto International Film Festival, kicks off this week, on the coattails of last week’s Venice Film Festival. We’re here for the annual Arab films at TIFF roundup! While some films that premiered in Venice are having their North American premiere at Toronto, many are also debuting for the first time: narrative features, documentaries, short films, animation, and the like. Arab Films at TIFF 2026 come from Palestine, Lebanon, France, Egypt, and the list goes on.
Let’s run down all the Arab cinema playing at TIFF 2026.
All film descriptions and stills are from the TIFF official website.
Centrepiece
Thirteen in Gaza (غزة 13) by Hosam Abu Dan
Palestine – Narrative Feature
Raghad, a 13-year-old girl, has lost her home and most of her family in a bombing in the Gaza Strip. She now lives with her father in a displacement camp, where she’s entering puberty in a crowded environment devoid of safety, privacy, and care. Meanwhile, her father faces hard choices and a moral dilemma involving Khalil, the local boss, in order to ensure their survival.
Palestinian director Hosam Abu Dan and his crew are all based in Gaza. This is his first feature film.
Conversation With The Sea (حوار مع البحر) by Muayad Alayan
Palestine – Narrative Feature
Set in Jerusalem, Muayad Alayan’s fourth feature sensitively explores the relentless situation in which Kamal, a Palestinian father, finds himself trapped. Convicted by an Israeli court, Kamal must repay the overdue social security contributions owed by his son, who died twenty years earlier in the Red Sea. With no evidence but the name of an Israeli woman found in a report, Kamal must prove his son’s death while re-establishing contact with his circle of friends and family, who haven’t seen him in years and hold a deep grudge against him. In a highly safeguarded society, his investigations reveal numerous tensions between communities, and the difficulty of proving his son’s innocence.
Conversation with the Sea previously premiered at Venice. Palestinian director Muayad Alayan is an AFF alum, Love, Theft and Other Entanglements and The Reports on Sarah and Saleem played at AFF2016 and AFF2018, respectively.
Furies by Rami Kodeih
Lebanon, Brazil – Narrative Feature
In a stifling, sticky Beirut, two sisters devise a meticulously planned, yet dangerous, nighttime caper to recover their money and fund a life-saving procedure. Teaming up with two men with shady pasts, the sisters go all out in a thrilling race against the clock.
La Gradiva by Marine Atlan
France, Italy – Narrative Feature
A pack of rowdy French teenagers embark on a school field trip to Pompeii, where desire, passion, angst, and class tensions in the present unfold against the ruins of the ancient past. Though this film does not contain an Arab narrative, Marine Atlan is a French director of Tunisian descent on her father’s side.
Woman Unknown (Kvinde Ukendt) by May el-Toukhy
Denmark – Narrative Feature
In this gripping third feature by Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy, the citizens of Copenhagen are eager to reclaim the city as their own with the end of the five-year Nazi occupation. Yet those with previous ties to the occupiers live in terror of their fellow Danes, with some of the most vicious forms of retribution exacted upon women accused of past involvement with Germans. For Marie, the possibility that her secrets may be discovered instills her with a dread that’s palpable in all her actions, no matter how hard she works to conceal it. A young housekeeper and nanny, Marie is poised to take a significant step above her social station by marrying Christian, the wealthy widower who’s also her employer. But a chance encounter with a man from her past initiates a series of events that put Marie in grave jeopardy.
TIFF Docs
Edward Said: Between Worlds by Maiken Baird
USA – Documentary Feature
Palestinian scholar Edward Said is profiled in his own words, drawing upon decades of archives, to explore the legacy of his groundbreaking works including Orientalism and The Question of Palestine.
Discovery
The Daughters of Abraham (Les Filles d’Abraham) by Hanaël El Yousfi
France – Narrative Feature
A young Muslim woman raised in Marseille reunites with a young Jewish woman after a period of estrangement, reconnecting as friends over summer break. When a sudden tragedy disrupts their carefree holiday, the pair face the similarities and differences that strengthen and threaten their relationship together.
Short Cuts
The Day I Smoked a Cigarette with my Father by Sameh Alaa, Robin Vouters
France, Egypt, Belgium – Animated Short
Sameh Alaa and Robin Vouters’animation brings the warmth of charming, bustling neighbourhoods of 1960s Cairo to life in this touching tale of a father returning home from prison after many years and attempting to repair a fragile bond with his eldest son.
Samel Alaa is an Egyptian film director and previous winner of the Short Film Palme d’Or in 2020, the first Arab to achieve such a feat. That film, I Am Afraid to Forget Your Face, played at the Arab Film Festival in 2021.
Imichki by Yza Nouiga
Canada – Narrative Short
French-Moroccan director Yza Nouiga evokes a fraught chapter in Morocco’s history through the intimate and stirring story of an illiterate woman in the 1970s attempting to write to her absent husband in a profound act of resistance against the boundaries of her world.
A Tenderness by Sabrine Khoury
Netherlands, Palestine – Narrative Short
Sabrine Khoury weaves a myriad of emotional and cultural threads in her delicate postpartum drama about a young Palestinian mother navigating seemingly small daily challenges, amplified by a visit from her parents at her new Amsterdam home.
Wavelengths
Masao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo by Kamal Aljafari
Germany, France, Japan – Documentary Short
Palestinian filmmaker and artist Kamal Aljafari documents one of Japan’s great maverick artists — now 85 — as he makes one last attempt to attain a passport decades after his was confiscated.
This film will be paired with Parastoo Anoushahpour’s film Peacocks Come with the Clouds as part of TIFF’s Wavelengths program. Aljafari previously directed the documentary With Hasan in Gaza.
And after you check out these Arab Films at TIFF 2026, don’t forget to save the date, our own Arab Film Festival opens in San Francisco on November 5th – this year we celebrate our 30th anniversary!
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