The Inaugural Year for Doha Film Festival 2025
The inaugural Doha Film Festival (‘DFF’) opened up with a programme featuring 97 films from 62 countries. Taking place between 20-28 November 2025, the festival has included a diverse range of films from its opening night film, The Voice of Hind Rajab to films such as the beautifully shot Sudanese film Cotton Queen, Shoot the People about Misan Harriman’s photo activism and Once Upon a Time in Gaza amongst others.
A key focus within the film programme has been to support the voices of those perceived as invisible within societies and to provide a platform for emerging voices. As such, alongside the rich film programme there have been talks, presentations and evening musical concerts from performers such as Mos Def and the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra, which again showcases the wealth of talent from the region and internationally.
The festival organised by the Doha Film Institute also took the opportunity to highlight some of the capital’s venues. The festival hosted events at the Islamic Museum of Art, Katara Cultural Village, Doha Festival City as well as other venues providing audiences with different experiences to explore the city’s cultural locations.
Initiatives such as Geekdom, took place with audience numbers reaching over 7000, emphasised the voices of those across a spectrum of creative communities including film gaming, design.
Doha Film Institute’s CEO and Festival Director, Fatma Hassan Alremaihi mentioned, “DFF builds on our 15-year legacy of nurturing talent and fostering cultural dialogue while bringing fresh perspectives and opportunities and represents the next step in Qatar’s journey of cultural leadership. We are not here to compete but contribute by creating opportunities that will benefit not just our region but the entire global film community. Our unique strengths lie in our legacy of amplifying Arab voices, our deep community roots, and our unwavering focus on authentic storytelling, and we will continue to focus on our strengths.”
DFF has remained keen to strengthen those connections with schools and young voices through its Ayjal initiative, which is also a competition programme highlighting resistance, revolution and resilience. This focus on younger generations remains beyond the duration of the festival with all year outreach involving a film club and other initiatives.
There were also panels emphasising the importance of nurturing talent amongst female filmmakers by uplifting diverse narratives. Female filmmakers from films such as Palestine 36, (Annemarie Jacir), Khartoum, (Rawia AlHa), The Present, (Farah Nabulsi), and My Father and Qaddafi (Jihan) spoke about the difficulties they encountered as women in film but Jacir mentioned the funding improvements in the Arab world for Arab cinema.
Following the film screenings, directors participated within a question and answer setting providing further insights.
Fresh from their award wins at Cairo International Film Festival, Arab and Tarzan Nasser – the directors of the impactful dramedy Once Upon a Time in Gaza, spoke about the ability of cinema to provide a voice to the powerless.
“Cinema is the voice, the picture, the representation of humans. We are tired of the image of the victim and of Palestinians constantly having to justify their humanity. ” They also mentioned the role cinema can play in historical events, “cinema doesn’t change reality. It asks a question that does not provide an answer. But you cannot deny that you have heard the voice. For us, cinema is a dramatic archiving of history.”
Once Upon a Time in Gaza is a thought provoking drama expressing comedic elements as the lives of ordinary men become immersed within the criminal underworld and cross paths with a corrupt police officer to dramatic effect with superb performances all around. The film never fails to remind audiences of the warn torn conflict remaining in the background, which is continuously timely.
The Doha Film Festival will conclude with its closing awards ceremony on 28 November 2025. Alremaihi indicated that collaboration remains an integral part of DFF’s future, “We collaborate with other festivals to expand opportunities for filmmakers to reach more screens, more audiences and more partners. Recent announcements, such as the Film Committee’s collaboration with Cairo Film Festival, reflect a complementary approach that serves the wider creative community.”
The DFF’s full programme list is available on the Doha Film Institute website here
