Egyptian billionaire Samih Sawiris lines up daughter to lead family's film festival

Egyptian billionaire Samih Sawiris, the founder of the Red Sea resort town of El Gouna, said his family is preparing to hand the El Gouna Film Festival to its next generation, with his daughter Talia being trained to take charge over the next few years.

Sawiris, chairman of the festival's board, spoke in a television interview on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the festival's ninth edition on Oct. 15. He said the Sawiris family is getting ready to give the next generation a bigger role in running the event, and that he would like the festival to be embraced by the town itself, the way Cannes, Venice and Zurich host theirs.

Talia Sawiris joined the festival's team this year and works on cultural strategy and partnerships. Her father said she is passionate about filmmaking, is interested in directing and producing, and has set herself the goal of winning an Oscar within 15 years. The handover will be gradual, he said. She is learning under the festival's more experienced managers, and Sawiris said he sees no problem if it takes three or four years before she is directly responsible for the event.

He also said he now enjoys the festival more than in its early years, because the anxiety that came with the first editions has faded and staging it has become routine.

A bigger international push

The comments add a succession plan to an ambition Sawiris laid out at a press conference in September, when he said the 10th edition in 2027 should mark a new stage for the festival. The goal, he said then, is to become "a truly international festival" and to move closer to the major events led by Cannes. At the opening ceremony, he said he was pleased to see the festival reach its ninth year and repeated his hope that it would take its place among the world's leading film festivals.

This year's edition runs until Oct. 23 under the theme "Cinema for Humanity: Archiving Narratives." It is screening 77 films, including 10 Arab titles, the most in the festival's history. The opening film was "All About Corrine," a French film directed by Marc Fitoussi and starring Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Kiberlain. Egyptian actress Mona Zaki received the festival's Creative Achievement Award at the ceremony.

It is also the first edition under artistic director Andrew Mohsen, who succeeded Marianne Khoury. The festival's industry arm, CineGouna, selected 13 projects from more than 310 applications, plus six films in post-production, to compete for a combined $310,000 in funding. It also launched a development program and market for Arabic-language television series. The Sawiris Foundation for Social Development, the family's charity, is backing sign-language interpretation at selected screenings.

The town behind the festival

The festival was founded in 2017 by a group that included Samih's older brother, Naguib Sawiris, and Amr Mansi, who remains its executive director. The 2022 edition was cancelled, and the 2023 edition was pushed back to December because of the war in Gaza before the full program returned in 2024.

El Gouna, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Hurghada, is the project on which Samih Sawiris built his fortune. He started developing it in 1990, and it is owned and developed by Orascom Development Holding, the resort company he founded, which also has destinations elsewhere in Egypt, in Montenegro and in Switzerland. Sawiris said in the interview that El Gouna has grown from a tourist village into a town with permanent residents and is now a city, which he expects to keep growing.

Sawiris stepped down as chairman and chief executive officer of Orascom Development Holding in December 2021 and handed the role to his son, Naguib Samih Sawiris. The family raised its stake in the company to about 97.3% in 2025 through a cash offer and then moved to delist it from the SIX Swiss Exchange. Orascom Development Egypt, the group's largest subsidiary, reported net profit after minority interest of 5.55 billion Egyptian pounds ($104.6 million) for 2025, up 78.5% from a year earlier, on revenue of 24.9 billion pounds ($470 million).

Sawiris, 69, is worth $1.4 billion, according to Forbes, which ranks him 31st on its 2026 list of the richest Arabs. He is the second of three sons of Onsi Sawiris, who founded Orascom Construction in 1950. His brothers Naguib and Nassef are also billionaires.