Cinema of the Global South: A Programmer’s Meeting

In June 2025, we collaborated with Zawya (Egypt) to organize Cinema of the Global South: A Programmers’ Meeting, a three-day gathering that brought together filmmakers, programmers, and researchers from across the Global South. Held in Cairo, the meeting created space to reflect on programming practices, the politics of film circulation, and the role of cinema in shaping cultural memory across geographies.

Discover the speakers’ list and the film screenings.

The program included a panel moderated by executive director Nada Bakr (Network of Arab Alternative Screens, Germany), featuring Hania Mroue (Metropolis Cinema, Lebanon), Butheina Kazim (Cinema Akil, UAE), and Kais Zaied (CinéMadart, Tunisia), who reflected on the practical, political, and imaginative dimensions of programming films from and for the region.

The gathering also included a lecture by Mohanad Yaqubi (Palestine Film Institute, Palestine), titled Recovered Images: Transcription as Restitution, which explored the role of inventories, transcripts, and kinships in shaping cinematic memory. The session was moderated by researcher and curator Ali Al-Adawy (Wekalet Behna, Egypt).

Additionally the event ran two rare film screenings:

• Turang (1957), an Indonesian film originally screened at the Afro-Asian Film Festival in Tashkent in 1958. Turang was part of a wave of revolutionary filmmaking that united voices from the Global South in solidarity and resistance.
• A selection of films by Serbian filmmaker Želimir Žilnik, known for his pioneering work in documentary and fiction, screened for the first time in Africa.

Thanks to everyone who attended and made this gathering possible, and to our network for contributing to our goal of building spaces for critical dialogue, creative exchange, and collective cultural imagination.

© Zawya

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