Cotton Queen
In a Sudanese cotton village where the matriarch is rumored to have killed a British general, teenage Nafisa must decide what she owes her grandmother’s legacy and what she’s willing to burn down to claim her own.
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Friday, May 8, 2026
- Limited Availability
- On Standby
- Matinee
Saturday, May 9, 2026
- Limited Availability
- On Standby
- Matinee
The cotton fields of Sudan have long belonged to the formidable village matriarch Al-Sit (Rabha Mohamed Mahmoud). Local legends swirl around her, ranging from rumors that she can see the future to whispers that she is the killer of at least one British general. Her granddaughter Nafisa (Mihad Murtada) has her own ideas about her future, most of them involving onion farmer Babiker (Talaat Fareed) and none of them involving the marriage her family is already arranging without her.
When Bilal (Mohamed Musa) arrives from London, he brings with him a development plan, a marriage proposal, and a bag of genetically modified seeds that he promises will modernize the village's cotton industry. What they will actually do is lock every farmer into buying from him season after season. Al-Sit fought the British before for the right to this land and this cotton. Nafisa grew up on those stories. In his greed and shortsightedness, has Bilal underestimated the pair of them?
Cotton in Sudan is not simply an industry. It is woven into the country's communal rituals, its sense of identity, and its long and painful colonial history. Suzannah Mirghani builds an ecological and economic critique around all of that and somehow makes it feel as immediate as an argument happening in the next room. Shot in Egypt with Sudanese refugees after war forced the production out of Sudan in 2023, Cotton Queen is the first Sudanese feature directed by a woman. This Golden Alexander winner from the Thessaloniki International Film Festival will force you to reckon with what you are willing to fight for.
—Becky Rice
- Director: Suzannah Mirghani
- Principal Cast: Mihad Murtada, Rabha Mohamed, Talaat Fareed
- Country: Germany, France, Palestine, Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan
- Year: 2025
- Running Time: 94 min.
- Producer: Caroline Daube, Didar Domehri
- Screenplay: Suzannah Mirghani
- Cinematographers: Frida Marzouk
- Editors: Amparo Mejias, Simon Blasi, Frank Muller
- Music: Amine Bouhafa
- Awards: Thessaloniki Film Festival 2025 (Best Feature Film), Doha Film Festival 2025 (Audience Award)
- Filmography: Debut Feature Film
- Language: Arabic
- Has Subtitles: Yes
- International Sales: Totem Films