17th ALFILM – Arab Film Festival in Berlin

ALFILM’s 17th edition takes place this year April 22 to 28, 2026.

The festival is structured around three sections: Selection, Spotlight, and Specials, bringing together a wide range of films from across the Arab world that span diverse genres, styles, and thematic concerns. The films of the Selection bear the marks of grief, anxiety, frustration, and disillusionment with the current state of the world. And grapple with the imprint of this state on the intimate and the personal: on family ties, bonds of love, relationships to place, time, history, and to one’s own body. In doing so, they also carve out ways of living against death, of resisting a violence unbound, and of nurturing forms of restoration among ruin and rubble.

The Spotlight programme of this year’s edition is curated by Talal Afifi, founder of the Sudan Film Factory, and is titled Sudan: A New Projection – Retrospectives, Revolutions, and Restorations. It presents a range of contemporary and historical films, bringing Sudanese stories and experiences to the fore. In addition to film screenings and panel discussions, the programme includes an exhibition titled Sudan Retold.

In the Specials section, ALFILM honours, alongside the legendary Palestinian actor Mohamed Bakri, two landmarks of Egyptian cinema, Adieu Bonaparte (1985), and Land of Dreams (1993).

The honorary guest of this year’s edition is Onsi Abou Seif, the art director of both films Land of Dreams and Adieu Bonparte and many other masterpieces of Arab cinema from the late 1960s to the present. Abou Seif will hold a masterclass on the art of scenic design for cinema and his cinematic oeuvre.

Venues:

HAU1 Hebbel am Ufer Stresemannstraße 29, 10963 Berlin || City Kino Wedding Müllerstraße 74, 13349 Berlin || silent green Kulturquartier Gerichtstraße 35, 13347 Berlin || CineStar Kino in der KulturBrauerei (KB3 / KB5 / KB8) Schönhauser Allee 36, 10435 Berlin || SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA Lindower Str. 20/22, Haus C, 13347 Berlin || Wolf Kino Weserstr. 59, 12045 Berlin || Spore Initiative Hermannstraße 86, 12051 Berlin || Sputnik Hasenheide 54, 10967 Berlin Flutgraben e.V. Am Flutgraben 3, 12435 Berlin || Festsaal Kreuzberg Am Flutgraben 2, 12435 Berlin

Ticket prices depend on the cinema and are sold through the respective cinema online portals, more info here.