Cotton Queen
Directed by Suzannah MirghaniGermany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan 2025
Runtime 93'
In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, teenage Nafisa is raised on heroic tales of battling British colonizers told by her grandmother, the village matriarch Al-Sit. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa becomes the center of a power play to determine the future of the village. Awakening to her own strength, Nafisa sets out to save the cotton fields – and herself. Neither she nor her community will ever be the same again.
Directed by
Suzannah Mirghani
Screenplay
Suzannah Mirghani
Cinematography
Frida Marzouk
Editing
Amparo Mejías, Simon Blasi, Frank Müller
Music Department
Amine Bouhafa
Sound Design
Emmanuel Zouki, Laure Arto
Production Design
Pierre Glemet
Costume Design
Simba Elmur
Cast
Mihad Murtada, Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud, Talaat Fareed, Haram Bisheer, Mohamed Musa, Hassan Kassala
Production
Caroline Daube (Strange Bird), Didar Domehri (Maneki Films), Annemarie Jacir and Ossama Bawardi (Philistine Films), Jessica Khoury and Mohamed Hefzy (Film Clinic), Alaa Karkouti and Maher Diab (Mad Solutions)
International Sales
Totem Films
Tuesday 02.09
8.30am Hall Perla
Press, Industry
Wednesday 03.09
2.00pm Hall Perla
Public, All accreditations
Thursday 04.09
7.30pm Hall Corinto
Public, All accreditations
Suzannah Mirghani (1978) is a Sudanese-Russian filmmaker and editor at Georgetown University in Qatar. Her short film Al-Sit (2020) is on Netflix Middle East and won the Canal+ Award at Clermont-Ferrand, among other prizes. Her recent shorts include Virtual Voice (2021) and Kamala Ibrahim Ishag: States of Oneness (2022), commissioned by Serpentine Galleries. Cotton Queen (2025) won the ArteKino Award at L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation at Cannes Film Festival in 2022, and is Suzannah’s first feature film.
