DFF Archive Screenings 2025

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Explore all the Doha Film Festival 2025 screenings

Is this a Sign?

Made in Qatar Film Competition In the chaotic moments before her wedding, our nervous bride, Taara, finds herself in a comedy of errors. From a fiercely protective, impatient father to a sneaky younger sister who tries tagging along in the boot of a full car. And, right on cue, the disappearance of Taara's pendant, a family heirloom that she cannot get married without. Beneath the bustle, a young woman balances love and obligation, stalling a conversation she is not ready to have.

Short Narrative

Project Aisha

Made in Qatar Film Competition Confined after an accident, a twelve-year-old's home becomes a maze of corridors, monitors and rules. Her neurosurgeon mother, terrified of loss, rejects medical advice and builds her own regimen of care. The house shifts from haven to experiment as machines hum like lullabies and affection tightens into surveillance. Rooted in point-of-view subjectivity and shaded by the caution of ‘Frankenstein’, the film considers when love becomes a cage, and what it costs to force destiny’s hand.

Short Narrative

Qadha' W Qadar

Made in Qatar Film Competition Anxious yet resolute, a young woman arrives determined to end a marriage that has narrowed her world. In the corridor, a mother pleads for compromise; a sister counters with candour. Inside the chamber, arguments turn abstract; in the hallway, the stakes are intimate and generational. A devastating disclosure reframes loyalty, shame and love, echoing the director’s meditation on women taught to “keep the peace”. To choose her voice is to confront everything that silence once protected.

Short Documentary or Essay

Theatre of Dreams

Made in Qatar Film Competition Set against the backdrop of the FIFA Men’s World Cup Qatar 2022, Theatre of Dreams tells the untold story of the first Qatar Women’s National Football Team. Through a deeply personal lens, the film explores the courage, cultural defiance, and hidden sacrifices of the team’s captain, who, 12 years later, confronts the emotional cost of being among the first women to break taboos in pursuit of the right to play.

Short Documentary

Villa 187

Made in Qatar Film Competition Filmmaker Eiman Mirghani and her family have called Qatar home for over 30 years, despite being from Sudan. In 2020, Eiman’s father broke the news to the family that their visa had suddenly been cancelled, and, for the first time ever, they were unsure of their future. Shortly after, Eiman begins to document the process of packing up the house her family have called home for over three decades—reminiscing over the past and pondering on the future in a home that was never really theirs.

Unknown

DFF Ticketing Test FIlm 2025

International Feature Film Competition Short synopsis here

Feature Narrative

The Voice of Hind Rajab

Opening Night Film, Ajyal Feature Film Competition A single call becomes a measure of our humanity. The recorded voice of a child anchors a patient, devastating account told through those who tried to save her. What unfolds is less reconstruction than remembrance: a film built around a real voice, guided by those who listened, waited and refused to abandon hope. Dramatised with ethical care, it invites us to feel the weight of time, silence and responsibility, and to preserve a name, asking what it means to answer a plea that the world needs to hear.

Feature Narrative

Blue Heron

International Feature Film Competition In the late 1990s, eight-year-old Sasha and her Hungarian immigrant family move to Vancouver Island, hoping for a new start. But as her brother Jeremy’s erratic behaviour grows increasingly dangerous, the family’s fragile sense of peace begins to crumble. Years later, Sasha, now an adult, looks back through memories, home videos, and silence, seeking to make sense of what was lost. ‘Blue Heron’ is a tender, haunting meditation on family, memory, and the quiet distances between love and understanding.

Feature Narrative

The Christophers

Gala Screening Eight unfinished canvases sit in storage, the remnants of a myth and a career that flared during Britain’s 1960s–70s pop-art boom. Desperate for an inheritance, two siblings recruit a gifted restorer, once a forger, to finish the series and return the works to hiding, ready to be “found” when their father dies. To reach them, she insinuates herself into the artist’s house and daily routine, discovering a fortress of clutter, caustic humour and a man armoured by wit, vanity and fear, an icon who has stopped painting yet cannot stop performing.

Shorts Programme

Made in Argentina and Chile – Short Films Programme

A curated showcase of seven short films, presented as part of Qatar’s Years of Culture programme with Argentina and Chile. Celebrating bold new voices from both nations, the compelling slate highlights diverse stories, cinematic craft, and cultural perspectives that connect audiences across continents through the power of film.

Feature Documentary

My Father and Qaddafi

International Feature Film Competition A daughter retraces the disappearance of a father she scarcely remembers, a Libyan diplomat-turned-peaceful-opposition leader, through family testimony, colleagues and archives. What begins as an investigation becomes a search for language, lineage and a self shaped by exile. As her mother’s long campaign for truth unfolds, memory shifts from myth to person, restoring detail to a life reduced by rumour and absence.

Feature Narrative

Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake

Ajyal Film Club When a sudden move upends home, a 12-year-old shields her little brother by turning their days into a film in which he stars. Between new neighbours, empty cupboards and nights without electricity, imagination becomes a protective lens and a way to keep going. As help arrives from unexpected places, the children learn to ask, receive and rebuild. A tender reminder that what we tell ourselves can save us, and that solidarity can turn strangers into family.

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