Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to a fresh new (and sunny) week. Today’s issue is all about stories: those told in Cairo, of Cairo, and showcased in Cairo.
The 47th Cairo International Film Festival is on, and for 10 days the city turns into an open house for cinephiles, with 145 films from 64 countries screening at the Egyptian Opera House, Downtown and Zamalek cinemas, and a handful of malls. This week’s Enterprise Guide rounds up the standout films, with synopses, screening times, and venues for each.
Elsewhere today: In Ears to the Ground, we start with a story you may find a piece of yourself in: New Shoes, a short story by Cairo-raised writer Hisham Matar, in which a man living in London keeps hearing he’s been spotted back in Cairo, sipping tea at ahwas and browsing shops. It’s more of a reading than a podcast, with Matar narrating in The New Yorker: The Writer’s Voice, but it’s worth your time. Elsewhere in today’s issue, there’s plenty of football action in Europe, and we recap the weekend on the pitch.
But first, the news…
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Here are the stories driving the day, both at home and abroad.Valu’s net income rose 35% y-o-y to EGP 731 mn in 9M 2026, while its gross revenue increased 36% to EGP 5.33 bn, according to the company’s latest earnings release. Net revenue grew faster, up 53% to EGP 3.08 bn on merchant network growth, securitization gains, and interest income. However, net income trailed it by 18 percentage points, as new products, including El Gameya, and the expansion into Jordan weigh on near-term results.
MEANWHILE- Moving the state’s oil and gas companies from temporary listing to an actual offering could take six to nine months at best, or up to 18 months, depending on each company’s readiness and assets, Al Borsa reports, citing State-Owned Companies Unit head Hashem El Sayed. Companies have to close their books, hire advisers, and clear valuations that run four to five months where there’s real estate or mining assets to appraise, while others in the pipeline are still waiting on approvals from the Sinai Development Authority, he says.
^^We’ll have more on these stories in tomorrow’s edition of EnterpriseAM.
☀️ TOMORROW’S WEATHER- We’re in for a warm fall day in the capital tomorrow as temperatures climb to a high of 27°C before dropping to an overnight low of 17°C, according to our favorite weather app.
MAKING HEADLINES ABROAD-
It’s a relatively quiet Sunday on the international front. Here are the latest developments: Bahrain said it intercepted six drones sent by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) this morning, prompting Bahrain’s first threat alert to the public since September. The IRGC was targeting a US military base in the Gulf state, in response to what it described as “hostile US actions,” reporting “successful precision strikes” despite Bahrain’s interception. This comes amid a stalemate in the US-Iran negotiations to end the war and a stand-off over the Strait of Hormuz.
MEANWHILE- Singapore-based cloud computing company and Nvidia business partner Megaspeed said today that former executive Alice Huang officially left the company in August 2025 and that it launched an internal investigation into its business operations and supply chain controls. Meanwhile, US lawmakers are ramping up efforts to curb advanced AI chips reaching China amid the Jensen Huang affair and espionage controversy.
The 47th Cairo International Film Festival is on. For 10 days, Cairo turns into an open house for cinephiles, with a program of 145 films from 64 countries. Screenings are spread across the Egyptian Opera House, Downtown, and Zamalek cinemas, and a handful of malls, so there’s room for everything from indie discoveries to the latest from major directors.
This week’s edition of The Enterprise Guide rounds up the standout films of the edition, with a short synopsis, screening times, and venues for each. You can also check the full screening and events schedule here for showtimes of other films not covered in the list below.
First things first
The festival offers four packages. The 10 and 15 packages cover screenings and panels, while 10 Plus and 15 Plus add red carpet screenings. Package holders can only book same-day and next-day screenings at the box office, one ticket per screening. Prices range from EGP 500 to EGP 750. You can also book and check prices on the festival’s website or at venue box offices.
Where to go. Screenings are split between the Opera House (Main Theater, Small Theater, El Hanager Theater, and El Hanager Cinema), Zawya Cinema and Tahrir Cinema Downtown, Zamalek Cinema, and VOX halls at Mall of Egypt and City Center Almaza.
International Competition
These films compete for the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Pyramid awards. Each screens first at the Opera House’s Main Theater, usually followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and then again at one of the city’s cinemas.
#1-Strawberries: Two young Moroccan women leave home for southern Spain to work the strawberry harvest, lured by promises of fair pay and a better future for themselves and their families. On the huge farms of Huelva, they find something else: exploitation, harassment, and brutal working conditions, in a story drawn from real testimonies.
Screenings: Today, 6pm, Main Theater, Opera House. Tomorrow, Monday, 16 November, 2:30pm, Zawya Cinema.
#2-Yugo Goes to America: Three Serbian friends born in the 1990s set out from New York to Los Angeles in a Yugo, the car Americans mocked in the ‘80s as the worst ever made. Over 50 days, it breaks down again and again, and they meet Balkan diaspora communities across the US along the way.
Screenings: Monday, 16 November, 6:30pm, Main Theater, Opera House. Tuesday, 17 November, 9pm, Zawya Cinema.
#3-Four Minus Three: Barbara and Heli are professional performers who live with their two children in a playful, laughter-filled alternative life until a tragic accident takes her husband and both children. Alone in the face of unimaginable loss, Barbara navigates her grief in her own unconventional way, one step at a time. Based on a true story and starring Valerie Pachner.
Screenings: Monday, 16 November, 9pm, Main Theater, Opera House. Tuesday, 17 November, 5:30pm, Zamalek Cinema.
Critics’ week
This segment is reserved for the directors’ first and second features, and it often produces the festival’s biggest surprises. Films screen at the Small Theater, then at Tahrir Cinema the following day.
#1-The Blind Girl and an Elephant: In a Bangladeshi village during the pandemic, three girls dream of escaping forced marriage and the superstitions that hem them in. Only the blind girl gets out, and after a series of harsh turns, she finds herself face to face with a mysterious elephant.
Screenings: Monday, 16 November, 3pm, Small Theater, Opera House. Tuesday, 17 November, 4pm, Tahrir Cinema.
#2-The Red Hangar: During a military coup in Chile, Captain Jorge Silva starts his day as usual, training students at the Air Force Academy. When the coup hits, the Academy becomes a detention center, and he finds himself torn between loyalty to the institution and the voice of his conscience.
Screenings: Tuesday, 17 November, 3pm, Small Theater, Opera House. Wednesday, 18 November, 5pm, Tahrir Cinema.
Out of competition
These films aren’t up for awards, but they carry the biggest directing names of the year and tend to sell out the fastest. Book early, or go for the second screening if you miss the first.
#1-The Beloved: A famous Spanish director with a violent past returns to Spain to shoot a new film and offers the lead role to his estranged daughter, a young, little-known actress he hasn’t seen in 13 years. Working with him, she has to confront a man she has never been able to see as a father.
#2-Sheep in the Box: Otone and Kensuke lose their young son and find no way out of their grief. They decide to bring a humanoid robot into their lives, one that looks exactly like their late child, and the film follows how the relationship between them and this new child changes, raising quiet questions about loss, memory, and the limits of technology.
#3-Gentle Monster: Pianist Lucy moves with her husband Philip and their son to a country house near Munich, hoping he’ll recover from severe exhaustion. One morning, police raid the house and arrest Philip, turning her life upside down as she begins to discover that her husband isn’t the man she thought she knew.
Rasael El Bahr: The festival presents a restored version of the film about Yehia, a young doctor with a stutter who leaves his profession and Cairo to return to Alexandria for a fresh start, working as a fisherman. There, he meets the mysterious Noura and a cast of other characters whose stories entwine with his in a human, reflective journey about solitude, love, and self-discovery. Starring Asser Yassin and Basma.
Screenings: Today, 9pm, Main Theater, Opera House.
Missed this morning’s edition of EnterpriseAM? Here are the top stories in a nutshell.
Alexandria may soon be home to agreen AI data center built purely to export compute. Income Egypt for Infrastructure & Investment and Sustainable Infra Capital (SIC), a Dubai-based platform backed by Saudi and South Korean capital, are developing Project Atlas, a campus in New Borg El Arab whose 180-MW first phase targets European AI demand. Phase 1 will cost around USD 2.15 bn, and the consortium is targeting financial close by end-2027, with a first phase ready for service in 4Q 2028;
Shokeir Wind Energyreached financial close on its 900 MW plantnear Ras Shokeir in the Gulf of Suez, and once it’s running, it’ll be Engie’s largest onshore wind farm anywhere. Lenders have committed around USD 588 mn of non-recourse debt. The Finance Ministry is guaranteeing the state’s side of the 25-year power purchase agreement signed in March, under which the state grid operator buys every unit the farm produces;
Nick Oberheiden, US President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Cairo,called Egypt the US’ “largest export market in Africa” at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, adding that more than 2.1k US companies operate in the country. He also committed to “continue implementing the President’s Comprehensive Peace Plan for Gaza”;
The Financial Regulatory Authority iskeeping the door shut on new consumer finance and microfinance lendersfor another year, extending its freeze on new license applications through the traditional route to 11 October 2027. The ban also covers NGOs seeking to run microfinance programs. A separate, renewable freeze on fintech-based consumer finance licenses remains in place until 25 February 2027.
Spain and England clash tonight to decide who claims top spot as the Nations League group stage reaches its final round. Spain host England at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano in the sixth and final round of Group 3 in the competition’s top tier. Both teams have already booked their places in the quarterfinals, so tonight’s match is a direct fight for first place in the group.
The world champions arrive with a perfect record of five victories in five games, built on a world-record run of 43 matches unbeaten. England, under coach Thomas Tuchel, come in buoyant after four straight victories that put them second in the group. Kickoff is at 9:45pm on beIN Sports 1.
Other Nations League fixtures on our radar tonight:
Montenegro vs. Cyprus — 4pm, beIN Sports 2;
Armenia vs. Latvia — 4pm, beIN Sports 3;
Belarus vs. Albania — 7pm, beIN Sports 2;
Finland vs. San Marino — 7pm, beIN Sports 3;
Czechia vs. Croatia — 9:45pm, beIN Sports 4;
France vs. Turkey — 9:45pm, beIN Sports 2;
Italy vs. Belgium — 9:45pm, beIN Sports 3.
ICYMI-
Egypt secured a major5-0victory over Malawi at Cairo International Stadium on Friday in the qualifiers for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations, an evening when Mohamed Salah stole the spotlight. The 34-year-old scored two goals in the final minutes, the first with a far-post header in the 84th minute and the second a Panenka-style penalty in stoppage time. Egypt had opened the scoring within the first 10 minutes through Nasser Maher and Omar Marmoush, before Mohamed Hany added the third ahead of the end of the first half. The fixture marked new coach Ali Maher’s first game in charge. The victory lifted Egypt to 7 points at the top of Group B, level with Angola.
The all-time scorer debate: After Salah scored the two goals, his international tally rose to 70, but FIFA later revised the figure to 68, which leaves him one goal short of Hossam Hassan’s total. Either way, Salah still has a chance to make up the difference and take sole lead of the scoring charts in the return leg against Malawi in Lilongwe next Tuesday.
In the Nations League, Portugal’s post-Ronaldo era got off to a shaky start, as they suffered a 4-1 home defeat to Denmark on Saturday, their heaviest-ever loss on home soil in an official match.
This week, we’re kicking off with a story we reckon you’ll find a piece of yourself in. It isn’t a podcast in the usual sense; it’s more of a reading, but it’s worth your time regardless. Earlier in September, The New Yorker published a short story by Hisham Matar, the American-born, Cairo-raised, British-Libyan writer behind My Friends, which earned the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. In The New Yorker: The Writer’s Voice, Matar narrates his latest story, New Shoes.
What to expect: New Shoes follows a narrator in exile, a man who left Cairo at 18 to find a better life for himself and his family, who could afford only one ticket. He spent the next decade in Europe before settling in London, where he runs what is essentially a newspaper shop. Then the calls start. Family and old friends keep telling him they’ve seen him back in Cairo, sipping tea at ahwas, walking down the street, and browsing shops. The narrator can’t make sense of it and begins to wonder whether he has a double.
What we liked: New Shoes is a brilliant piece of work. It takes the deeply human question of “what if?” and runs with it, imagining the life the narrator never lived and leaving him to reckon with his regrets and a reality he didn’t expect. It’s introspective and heartfelt, and Matar’s own narration adds depth. His voice is calming, and his storytelling is assured.
The verdict: In just under 30 minutes, New Shoes leaves a lasting impression, and it has been on our minds since the narration came out in September. It’s an expertly crafted and expertly narrated tale of displacement, identity, and what haunts us when we leave home behind. If you want a listen that’s anything but your usual, make it this one today.
The EGX30 rose 0.3% at today’s close on turnover of EGP 9.3 bn (17.2% below the 90-day average). Local investors were the sole net sellers. The index is up 24.8% YTD.
In the green: Misr Cement (+6.2%), AMOC (+4.8%), and Mopco (+3.7%).
In the red: Raya Holding (-2.3%), Eastern Company (-2.1%), and Edita (-1.8%).
Private Label Egypt (PLE), Egypt’s leading private-label and contract-manufacturing exhibition, is back for its second year, taking place at the Cairo International Convention Center from Thursday, 19 November to Saturday, 21 November. The three-day event brings founders, retailers, importers, and brands from across the region face-to-face with Egyptian manufacturers, helping turn product ideas into market-ready brands.
Expect meetings with decision-makers from export-ready factories, matchmaking processes that connect your idea with the right manufacturer, and panel discussions and workshops with industry experts. Doors open at 10am and close at 8pm daily. Manufacturers can book a booth, while brands and founders can register as visitors through PLE’s website.
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