Directed by Claire Billet, Nadia Blétry • Documentary • With François Hollande, Maye Kabil, Ariane Lavrilleux, Ahmed Abdel Quddus • 2026 • 53 minutes
To an outsider, Egypt looks like a dynamic country reinventing itself. Under president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, construction is booming, with dams, bridges, roads, and tourism mega-projects proliferating in the desert and along the Mediterranean coast.
But behind the flashy projects, Egypt is a country on the brink of collapse. Egypt is now the third most indebted country in the world, its economy largely dependent on income from the Suez Canal and tourism. And those mega-projects? They are propped up by support from the Gulf states, the IMF and the European Union — and ultimately will be sold off to foreign investors.
In EL-SISI: EGYPT'S NEW PHARAOH, the directors speak with regular Egyptians struggling to make ends meet, political dissidents, and social and economic experts, revealing a country where poverty abounds, criticism is not tolerated, and the military has infiltrated almost every sector of the economy. Is the land of the pyramids modernizing — or do Egypt’s changes represent just another pyramid scheme?
Up Next in From the Middle East & North Africa
-
The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived
Directed by Heiny Srour • Documentary • 68 minutes
In the late 60s, Dhofar rose up against the British-backed Sultanate of Oman, in a democratic, Leninist guerrilla movement. Srour and her team crossed 500 miles of desert and mountains by foot, under bombardment by the British Royal Air Force, t...
-
Leila and the Wolves
Directed by Heiny Srour • Documentary • With Nabila Zeitouni, Rafik Ali Ahmad • 94 minutes
Drawing on the Arab heritage of the ‘Arabian Nights’, Leila and the Wolves combines fictional drama, archival footage, fantasy sequences, mosaic pattern, to refute the colonial and male dominated version o...
-
This Is Not a Movie: Robert Fisk and ...
Directed by Yung Chang • Documentary • With Robert Fisk • 2019 • 109 minutes
For more than 40 years, journalist Robert Fisk has reported on some of the most violent and divisive conflicts in the world.
Yung Chang’s This Is Not a Movie captures Fisk in action—feet on the ground, notebook in hand...
