Cairo International Film Festival invites all writers, critics, and film researchers to submit articles and critical readings addressing “Genre Films” across their various classifications, from horror and thrillers to sci-fi, action, noir, and fantasy.
This initiative seeks to enrich the critical dialogue around this cinema and present fresh readings that surpass traditional views, highlighting the deep artistic and intellectual value these works carry. This initiative culminates in publishing the selected essays in a printed book issued by the festival on genre cinema, concurrent with a special symposium to discuss these critical propositions.
“Night Promenade”: An Open Dialogue Between Classic and Contemporary
This call stems from the festival’s belief that film language expands to encompass a large family of diverse dialects. Each dialect has its own rules, emotional logic, and special contract with the spectator—a contract representing highly complex and significant semantic structures.
Embodying this vision, the “Midnight” program at the festival introduces a special section titled “Night Promenade.” It is founded on the premise that genre films deserve serious viewing and critical reflection. The pleasures of tension, dread, and astonishment they provide equal those offered by slow-paced cinematic works. The best genre films also offer intellectual illumination parallel to their entertainment appeal.
Every night of the program features two consecutive screenings, pairing a contemporary film in artistic dialogue with a classic film from the history of the same genre. This pairing aims to create a genuine conversation tracking the evolution of cinematic language and visual vocabulary across time and geography. The back-to-back screening format confirms that genre conventions constitute a shared, flexible lexicon developed jointly by audiences and filmmakers over decades.
The essays targeted in this call serve as the parallel critical companion to the screening program, forming a written body that approaches genre cinema with rigor and curiosity, granting it the deep attention it deserves.
Writing Topics
The festival welcomes critical proposals in several tracks, including, for example:
• Critical readings of films or directors within specific cinematic genres.
• Tracking the evolution of a specific cinematic genre across different time periods or geographies (Egyptian, Arab, or World Cinema).
• Exploring the relationship between genre films and their producing social and political contexts.
• Comparative studies of different treatments of a single cinematic genre.
• Re-evaluating critically neglected films or filmmakers.
• The presence of genre films in previous or current editions of Cairo International Film Festival.
Participation Guidelines and Conditions
• Article length: 2,000 words.
• Writing language: Arabic.
• Deadlines: Submission closes on September 15, 2026. The final deadline for submitting completed articles is October 1, 2026.
• Submissions must be original, exclusive, previously unpublished material, with strict adherence to critical writing standards and accurate documentation of information.
Submission Mechanism
Please send participation requests including the following elements:
- A brief author biography of up to 150 words, accompanied by previous samples of their written work.
- A comprehensive summary of the proposed article of up to 250 words, explaining the main idea and critical angle.
- Detailed contact information (full name, email, and phone number).
Submitted proposals are evaluated according to criteria including the depth of the critical proposition, originality of the idea, alignment with the festival’s objectives, and the quality of the writing style.
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