Sharjah Film Platform returns for its ninth edition from 30 October to 8 November 2026, with screenings at Mirage City Cinema, the open-air theatre in Sharjah's historic quarter, and at Vox Cinemas in City Centre Al Zahia. Organised by Sharjah Art Foundation, the ten-day festival presents nearly 30 feature-length and short films, including award-winning titles and UAE premieres, alongside talks and a masterclass.

The festival opens with Letters, a 2025 anthology of 17 short films by Josef Khallouf reflecting on Lebanon's recent history, and closes with Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind's An Incomplete Drowning, a 2026 feature about the fragility of objects and their power to carry memory. Between those bookends, the programme ranges widely: a Cuban crocodile hunter's struggle to support his family, a portrait of a Pakistani punk musician, a friendship shaped by grief, and a story of two sisters confronting caste discrimination.

This year's Director in Focus is the acclaimed Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako, whose poetic films explore identity, displacement and migration across Africa. The festival will screen a selection of his work, including Bamako, Timbuktu and Black Tea, and Sissako will give a masterclass on a career spanning more than three decades.

Films in competition are eligible for awards in four categories, documentary feature, documentary short, fiction feature and fiction short, judged by panels drawn from filmmaking, academia and festival programming. The programme also includes work supported by the foundation's own short film production grant and a First Takes strand for student filmmakers, developed with universities across the Emirates, which underlines the festival's role as a meeting point for emerging talent from the region and beyond.