Qatar’s Doha Film Festival will premiere four Qatari features and one original series at its upcoming edition in November in a watershed moment for the local film and TV industry.
Feature films Jodari Meno by Jamal Al Khanji, A Very Ordinary Life by Mohamed Deniz, First to Fly by Rodrigo Vazquez Salessi and When the News Breaks You by Hamad Al Hajri will debut as Special Screenings.
The sidebar will also showcase Elzam, which is produced by Jassim Al Romaihi and Ahmed Al Baker as an original series from Katara Studios.
These Qatari productions join 15 previously announced features which will play in the International Competition, with the full festival lineup due to be unveiled in the coming weeks.
It’s the biggest haul of local features to be unveiled in one year since Qatar began its mission to build a film and TV business from scratch with the launch of the Doha Film Institute in 2010.
Jodari Meno follows director Al Khanji’s quest to land a world-record dogtooth tuna. What begins as an extreme pursuit becomes an intimate journey into obsession, mortality and the search for meaning.
It was supported by The Film House Originals, Alkhanji Enterprise, Doha Film Institute, Al Jazeera Documentary and Media City Qatar.
Deniz’s A Very Ordinary Life is a Qatar-Morocco production, produced by Abdulrahim Al-Siddiqi and Bouchra Malek. It follows a retired Qatari pilot and a young Moroccan art teacher who, unknowingly father and daughter, are drawn towards one another through dreams, letters and a buried secret.
First to Fly by Rodrigo Vazquez Salessi follows two young gymnasts who became the first athletes in the history of Qatar and their respective countries to compete at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships.
When the News Breaks You is a production examining the realities faced by journalists working across the Middle East. It explores the challenges confronting journalists reporting from war zones and conflict areas, and the personal cost of bringing stories from the region to audiences around the world.
Elzam is an eight-part documentary series following a group of falconers on hunting expeditions, documenting a tradition that has long been a source of pride in Qatar, the Gulf and the wider Arab world.
Jodari Meno and When the News Breaks You both received funding through the Doha Film Institute’s Grants Programme and participated in mentorship activities at Qumra 2025.
“This is a watershed moment for Qatar’s film and creative industries. To present four feature films and an original series from Qatar at Doha Film Festival is a powerful reflection of how far our creative ecosystem has come. These projects mark Qatar’s increasingly meaningful role in empowering ambitious global stories and supporting the talent behind them,” said Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, CEO of Doha Film Institute (DFI) and Director of Doha Film Festival.
Three of the films – Jodari Meno, A Very Ordinary Life and First to Fly – were supported by Media City Qatar, the government-backed media, innovation and technology hub in Doha.
“It’s great to see not one but three films supported by Media City selected to screen in the special screenings program at Doha Film Festival 2026,” said the hub’s CEO Hamad Omar AlMannai.
“What makes this especially exciting is that Doha Film Festival gives filmmakers from Qatar and the wider region a global platform to help their stories reach audiences around the world. This is also a testament to the power of the media ecosystem we are enabling with partners like the Doha Film Institute and the opportunities it creates for media growth in Qatar and the region.”
The Doha Film Festival will take place from November 19-27, with key partners including Katara, Media City Qatar, the Film Committee and Visit Qatar.