There are people who watch films and experience emotions at face value, and there are people who feel everything. Not just the emotion, but the whole story: how it unfolded, the reactions of others, what it might mean for the future, and even the philosophical reasoning behind it, no matter how far-fetched it may seem.
For these viewers, it all makes perfect sense. These are the kind of people who can only truly enjoy certain films, usually ones that are a bit more intense than the casual date-night movie you would take your partner to see.
This year in Egypt, several films have been released that speak directly to these people, those who feel everything, think more deeply, and choose to look past surface-level interpretations of reality and the world around them.
Below is a list of Egyptian films made for those who feel everything, and proudly so.
Life After Siham (2025)
Do the people we love remain with us even after they are gone? Do we continue to sense them in the small moments, the big moments, and even in the quiet, ordinary ones, when we are simply looking up at the sky and wondering if they are looking back at us?
In the French-Egyptian documentary La vie après Siham (Life After Siham, 2025), Egyptian-French Director Namir Abdel Messeeh drifts through the vast emotional landscape that follows the loss of a loved one, mourning his mother by retracing the history of his family. We see his family in all of their moments, as if the camera itself is part of the family, or has quietly become a family member.
In some way, the camera offers Namir a sense of peace, allowing him to revisit and refocus on details he may never have noticed before. And when those we love leave us, the camera becomes our only way of seeing them again, and perhaps of feeling their presence, just once more.
My Brother, My Brother (Short 2025)
Memories are never governed by our own will. We cannot guide them like a remote control, nor can we change the channel knowing exactly which memory will appear next. Instead, memory moves like a waterfall, crashing over us, reshaping us, as though our identity is being born again and again.
After the loss of a loved one, memory becomes a way of reliving a life, of tracing its arc from beginning to end. And in returning to it, new memories rise to the surface, memories that alter how you understand who you are and how you have lived. The short film, My Brother, My Brother (2025), is an autofiction animated film by Egyptian twin filmmakers Abdelrahman and Saad Dnewar that meditates on loss not as an ending, but as a passage toward healing.
In many ways, the film suggests that we carry the people we lose much like the womb once carried us, held within, shaping us from the inside, just as a child grows inside a mother’s body. Told through the story of identical twins Omar and Wesam, the film explores the bond they share from the womb and how that connection is fractured by the death of one of them.
Blending memory, dreams, and fragmented timelines, the story unfolds through two perspectives, revealing how grief can be both deeply personal and deeply shared.
Aisha Can’t Fly Away (2025)
There are films that move you in the moment, bringing tears that fade once the credits roll. And then there are the ones that settle much deeper, lingering in your mind so that fragments resurface during the most ordinary parts of your day. Out of nowhere, the feeling returns, as if the film has found a way to replay itself inside you.
Aisha Can’t Fly Away (2025) is a debut feature from Egyptian filmmaker Morad Mostafa that leaves a deep emotional mark long after you’ve watched it. At first glance, the film’s beautiful cinematography draws you in, but it does not shy away from showing the harsh and often painful realities of life.
Director Mostafa takes an intimate look at struggle and suffering, using the camera to stay close to the main character’s experiences in ways that are both tender and deep. The story follows Aisha, played by Buliana Simon Arop, a 26-year-old Sudanese woman living in Ain Shams, a neighborhood in Cairo where many African migrants and refugees make their home. Against a backdrop of economic hardship and societal pressures, the film explores moments of despair, survival, and the strength found in Aisha’s everyday life.
I Don’t Care if the World Collapses (2025)
Which matters more: the work or the human, the business or the employee, profit or justice, success or humanity? These pairs are often treated as opposites, as though one must always come at the expense of the other.
In the real world, business is routinely valued above the individual, and personal success is seen as far more important than contributing to humanity as a whole. The way these values are weighed and balanced is what ultimately shapes how the world functions and moves forward.
Inshallah El Donya Tethad (I Don’t Care if the World Collapses, 2025), a short film by Egyptian director Karim Shaabaan available on YouTube, exposes the extremes we are willing to reach to prioritize commercial interests over human understanding and empathy.
Ultimately, it leaves us questioning what we intend to leave behind in this world: our possessions and achievements, or the people we touched, supported, and truly cared for.
Happy Birthday (2025)
Happy Birthday… it is the day we look forward to, plan for, and carry in our minds through countless other days, hoping that this single moment can bring us closer and make life feel just a little lighter, a little brighter. Yet it is also the day that can reveal the gaps in society; the divide between those who can afford lavish celebrations and those for whom such joy is out of reach.
In Happy Birthday (2025), Egyptian-American director and producer, Sarah Goher, tells the story of eight-year-old Toha, a young maid who goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that her best friend Nelly, the daughter of her wealthy employer, has the perfect birthday party.
What unfolds around this celebration becomes something far more revealing, which is a portrait of a society where excess and inequality exist side by side, and where a party can be valued more highly than the people who labor to make it happen.
As the world slowly takes its first steps into 2026, these Egyptian films will continue to linger long after their release, as they explore themes that will always be felt and experienced, such as losing loved ones, trying to understand our small place in the world, and asking ourselves, if the world collapses tomorrow, what would be the first thing to come to our mind?
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