17 films, 100+ young jurors: Doha Film Festival unveils its Ajyal lineup

The Doha Film Festival runs from 19 to 27 November 2026, and the Doha Film Institute has just announced who is competing in Ajyal, the youth-judged section. There are 17 films in total: 5 features and 12 shorts. Here is what to know.

1. A boy who has no high school

Morocco–Denmark co-production Out of School, by Hind Bensari, follows 12-year-old Mohamed. There is no secondary school in his Atlas Mountains village, so he has to drop out and dreams of finding work in the city to lift his family out of poverty.

2. A Cannes winner is in the mix

Ben'Imana, by Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo, won the Caméra d'Or (Cannes' first-film prize) in 2026. It follows Finirenda, a genocide survivor who tries to bring victims and the families of perpetrators into dialogue.

3. Three more features, three very different worlds

In Summer Meadow, a young Lebanese woman learns shepherding and lives in isolation with her flock, far from war. Gabin is about a young man who is expected to run his father's butcher shop but dreams of training a cow for competitions. We Are Aliens, from Japan and France, tells of a friendship between two primary-school boys, one of whom may really be an alien.

4. Memory and war in shorts from the Arab world

Intersecting Memory (Palestine–France) revisits Hebron during the Second Intifada. Prisoner of Love (Lebanon–US) follows a young paramedic playing cards with friends in a Beirut refugee camp after an Israeli strike. Rachid Bouchareb's documentary Boomerang Atomic returns to 13 February 1960, when France tested a nuclear bomb in the Algerian desert.

5. Migration dreams and fading crafts

Tunisia's The Bird's Placebo features Yahya, a wheelchair user in a marginalised Tunis neighbourhood who dreams of crossing the Mediterranean until a rare bird changes his path. Threads of Support, from Uzbekistan and Qatar, looks at hand-woven silk in the Fergana Valley, now under pressure from cheap printed goods.

6. Grief, climate and machines

In Typhoon Mambo, a widow keeps talking to her late husband through an AI chatbot. Spain's Vegetare imagines a beech tree with an eating disorder carving its diary into its bark as the climate collapses. India's We Were Here follows three retirees who decide to compete with machines at housework.

7. Small moments, big questions

South Korea's Boundaries starts with a passenger reclining a bus seat too far. Nobody Said Anything (Serbia and others) has two girls explaining what happened to a kitten. China's As a Cure and The Kalgan Horse follow a girl hunting for her hidden ID card and a boy trying to save his horse.

8. The people choosing the winners

More than 100 young people aged 16 to 25 sit on the Ajyal juries. Festival director Fatma Hassan Alremaihi said their role goes beyond watching: some past jurors have moved on to selecting films for programmes and moderating panel talks.

With winners chosen by a generation that grew up on screens, this lineup is worth keeping an eye on.