Following its world premiere at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, Dutch-Egyptian director Ashgan El-Hamus’s debut feature, AL BARANEYA, is set to hold its North American premiere at the upcoming Chicago International Film Festival from October 14th to 25th, where it will be competing in the prestigious New Directors Competition.
 
The selection marks a high-stakes North American debut, bringing an auteur-driven perspective on contemporary Egyptian life that trades classic melodrama for a restrained, visually striking examination of autonomy and rural tradition. The story centers on Amal, a young pregnant woman forced to navigate the silent pressures of her community while attempting to reclaim individual agency over her body and future when an offer to sell her family's land threatens their way of life.
 
For director Ashgan El-Hamus, AL BARANEYA is a deeply personal project rooted in her own heritage. Returning to her family’s ancestral village in El Menofia, an Egyptian governorate, El-Hamus drew inspiration from the overwhelming sense of communal warmth and generational continuity she experienced among the women of her family.
 
To preserve this lived authenticity, El-Hamus cast her actual Egyptian relatives alongside lead actress Reem Amer, shaping the screenplay through months of rehearsals into a hyper-realistic exploration of small-town living, shrinking opportunities, and systemic pressure. Supported by a non-professional ensemble whose presence lends a documentary-like texture, Amer anchors the narrative as its sole professional actor, bridging raw realism with fictional depth.
 
Behind the lens, El-Hamus assembled a formidable creative team to construct the film’s distinct sensory world. The visual landscape is lensed by DOP Douwe Hennink, whose deliberate camera work captures both the expansive isolation of the Egyptian countryside and the suffocating claustrophobia of domestic interiors.
 
Complementing the imagery, sound recordist and designer Taco Drijfhout crafted a textured, atmospheric soundscape that amplifies the quiet tensions of the rural environment, while editor Dieter Diependaele balances narrative restraint with psychological momentum.
 
AL BARANEYA is a Dutch-Egyptian-Belgian co-production led by Frank Hoeve for BALDR Film (Netherlands), alongside co-producers Kesmat Elsayed for Seera Films (Egypt) and Eurydice Gysel for CZAR Film (Belgium). Through BALDR Film, Hoeve has built a distinguished slate of international festival hits, including Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix winner ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (2024), Johan Grimonprez’s Oscar-nominated documentary SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ÉTAT (2024), Jan-Willem van Ewijk’s ALPHA (2024), Dawood Hilmandi’s PAIKAR (2025), and Morgan Knibbe’s THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS (2025).
 
Co-written by Ashgan El-Hamus and Roelof-Jan Minneboo, the project was developed and produced with support from the Netherlands Film Fund, CoBO, the Belgian Tax Shelter, BNP Paribas Fortis Film Finance, the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Red Sea Fund, and broadcaster KRO-NCRV. World sales are handled by MAD World.
 
The Chicago International Film Festival’s New Directors Competition is dedicated to spotlighting pioneering voices in global cinema, pitting debut and sophomore feature filmmakers against one another for the coveted Gold and Silver Hugo awards. El-Hamus’s inclusion underlines her emerging voice as a director capable of fusing European cinematic minimalism with culturally rooted MENA storytelling.