Four films supported by AFAC will hold their world premieres in various sections of the Venice International Film Festival 2025. From Sudan, Libya, Algeria and Lebanon, these films use various approaches to escape, piece together or improve realities.

Two of these films will be featured in the festival’s Critics’ Week section: Cotton Queen by Sudanese filmmaker Suzannah Mirghani, and Roqia by Algerian director Yanis Koussim. Cotton Queen follows teenager Nafisa in a cotton-farming village in Sudan. When a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically-engineered cotton, Nafisa finds herself at the center of a power play to determine the future of the village. Awakening to her own strength, Nafisa sets out to save the cotton fields - and herself.

Roqia, set between 1993 and the present, interweaves parallel narratives: one of Ahmed, a family man who develops amnesia after a car crash; the other of an aging raqi (exorcist) grappling with Alzheimer’s disease under the worried eye of his disciple. As Ahmed dreads recovering his memory, the disciple fears the raqi’s memory loss could unleash an evil that was once sealed away thirty years ago.

Premiering in the Out of Competition - Non-fiction section, My Father and Qaddafi marks a milestone as the first Libyan film to screen in Venice in 13 years. Directed by Jihan K, the film documents her search for her father Mansur K—Libya’s former foreign minister, UN ambassador, and a peaceful opponent of Qaddafi. Through archival material, testimonies and personal reflections, the film retraces her mother’s two-decade pursuit of truth and justice, while exploring Jihan’s own quest for memory, identity, and connection to a father she never really knew—and to a country she longs to understand.

From Lebanon, Do You Love Me? by Lana Daher will premiere in the Giornate Degli Autori - Venice Days section. This archive-based documentary traces the lived experiences of generations of Lebanese people from the 1950s to the present day. Drawing on a wide array of material—from journalistic archives, television broadcasts, and pop culture, to video art, photography, home videos, fiction and documentary films, and personal collections—the film captures Lebanon’s cyclical passage through war and peace across the decades.

Other Arab films featured in this year’s festival include The Voice of Hind Rajab by Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania (in Competition), Hijra by Saudi director Shahad Ameen (Venice Spotlight), and Calle Malaga by Moroccan director Maryam Touzani (Venice Spotlight).

For the full program and screening schedule, visit the festival’s official website.