The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has unveiled a Marwan Hamed retrospective for its 2026 edition, “in celebration of the prolific Egyptian director’s career.”
The upcoming edition of IFFR will feature the European premiere of his upcoming El Sett, a biopic of Egyptian singer and actress Umm Kulthum biopic starring Mona Zaki (Flight 404) and Mohamed Farag (Voy!Voy!Voy!). The fest program will also screen Hamed’s works spanning the past two decades.
“Hamed has repeatedly set box office records in his home country – most recently with historical epic Kira & El Gin (also in selection at IFFR 2023), which became the biggest financial success in Egyptian cinema history at the time of its release, bringing post-pandemic audiences back to theaters in droves,” said IFFR organizers. “From Hamed’s feature debut in 2006 with the screen adaptation of Alaa Al Aswany’s novel The Yacoubian Building, which sees him directing a screenplay written by his late father Wahid Hamed, he has made blockbuster films which have garnered both significant commercial and artistic recognition. Both of these titles will screen in the upcoming Focus program.”
The retrospective will also include the mystery thrillers The Blue Elephant and The Blue Elephant 2, hit Egyptian underworld feature Ibrahim Labyad, corruption drama Diamond Dust, based on the Arab noir novel by frequent collaborator Ahmed Mourad, and El-Asliyyin (The Originals), Mourad’s first screenplay, about a bank employee who is made redundant and then gets a phone call which changes his life forever.
El Sett is the first major biopic of the late Umm Kulthum, who has been called the most influential singer from the Arab world and the “fourth pyramid” of Egypt.
“Marwan Hamed is the most fascinating director to emerge from Egypt’s ever-fertile film culture in the last quarter century,” said IFFR festival director Vanja Kaludjercic. “Spectacle is his mode of choice, subversive intelligence his speciality. Hamed knows how to entrance his audience with grand emotions, extraordinary sights and outstanding performances by his stars – just as he knows how to make people look critically at society and the nation’s history.”
She emphasized that the retrospective of his cinema work is “the first of its kind outside Egypt.”
Said Hamed: “I would like to thank the Rotterdam Film Festival for this great honor. I’m very grateful to the festival for hosting the European premiere of El Sett and for showcasing my work, it is a great privilege.”
