Among the final stops on the road to their expected premieres at the major prestige film festivals of 2027 — most notably Cannes — are these half-dozen projects being presented at the Final Cut in Venice work-in-progress lab. Launched in 2013, Final Cut in Venice supports projects from all African countries and six countries of the Middle East: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Yemen. This year we find the new Bassel Ghandour film, the freshly just filmed new oeuvre by Moroccan Alaa Eddine Aljem, and Algerian filmmaker Sofia Djama‘s sophomore project which was filmed this past May.
Jordanian filmmaker Bassel Ghandour saw his feature debut inn 2014’s Theeb premiere at the Venbice Film Festival (he won Best Director in the Orizzonti section). His third feature Occupational Hazards stars Hiam Abbass – it chronicles the experiences of a multi-generational Palestinian family. Anther freshly minted film is Eldorado, The Taste Of The South by Alaa Eddine Aljem — this is about migrants searching for a secret utopian island where everyone lives in peace.
Djama’s A Quarter to Thursday was shot in Algiers and Marseille and stars Zita Hanrot, Grégory Montel and Faouzi Bensaïdi – this is set in a strange country and nutty tale where presidents never die, a young woman seeking a clandestine abortion turns to two unreliable friends and a washed-up Russian gynaecologist recently returned from exile, but the death of a small dog derails their fragile plans. Here are the Final Cut in Venice 2026 titles:
A Quarter To Thursday, dir. Sofia Djama (Fr-Belg-Alg)
Eldorado, The Taste Of The South, dir. Alaa Eddine Aljem (Mor-Fr-It-Nor)
Madi Makambu, dir. Machérie Ekwa Bahango (Congo DR-Fr-Belg)
Mehal Sefari, dir. Abraham Gezahagne (Ethiopia-Can-Ger-Neth-Nor-Saudi)
Occupational Hazards, dir. Bassel Ghandour (Jor-Qat-UK-Saudi-Palestine)
Plague, dir. Youssef Chebbi (Tunisia-Fr-Qat-Saudi-Slovenia)
