CINÉMA AFRICAIN! 04 - 07 NOV 2026

COTTON QUEEN

Suzannah Mirghani
2025, Germany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, 94 min.
Feature film, color, English, Arabic with German subtitles

FRIDAY 06. NOVEMBER 2026 | 20H

MOVIE 2 | MOVIEMENTO

Austrian festival premiere!

Followed by a Q&A with cinemaptographer Frida Marzouk

-> TICKETS (available from October 20)

In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, teenage Nafisa is raised on heroic tales of battling British colonisers told by her grandmother, the village matriarch Al-Sit. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa becomes 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. Neither she nor her community will ever be the same again.

Cast: Mihad Murtada as Nafisa, Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud as Al-Sit, Talaat Fareed as Babiker, Haram Bisheer, Mohamed Musa as Bilal, Hassan Kassala as Nadir

Suzannah Mirghani is a Sudanese-Russian filmmaker and writer based in Doha, where she works as an editor at Georgetown University in Qatar., where she works as an editor at Georgetown University in Qatar. Her acclaimed short film Al-Sit (2020) won the Canal+ Award at Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in 2021, as well as six Academy Award qualifying prizes at Tampere Film Festival. Her other works include Virtual Voice (2021) and Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness (2022), commissioned by Serpentine Galleries. Cotton Queen (2025), winner of the ArteKino Award at L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation at Cannes Film Festival in 2022, marks her feature directorial debut.

Frida Marzouk, A.F.C. (director of photography) is a French Tunisian cinematographer whose work spans narrative features, documentaries, short films, and commercials. After studying film in Paris, she moved to New York to focus on cinematography, beginning her career as a focus puller before working for over a decade as a lighting technician. Her recent work as a cinematographer includes Where the Wind Comes From (Sundance Film Festival, 2025), Promised Sky (Cannes Film Festival, Un Certain Regard, 2025), and Cotton Queen (Venice Intl. Film Festival, Settimana della Critica, 2025).

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