Bio

  • Photograph by Mona El Husseini

Randa Ali is a filmmaker working between Egypt and the USA. Her work explores themes of alienation and the desire to connect in a constantly changing world through stories of individuals and their relationship with places.

She is currently developing her first feature film, Rock, Paper, Sea, a coming-of-age story exploring girlhood in early 2000s Egypt. The project was awarded the CNC grand award at Aflamuna Connection and the Pop Up Film Residency from Tatino Films.

In 2024, her short film Mango, an exploration of loss and grief through a daughter-father relationship, was in the official competitions of the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, Bilbao International Film Festival (ZINEB) and the Cairo International Film Festival. Mango was also awarded the WWF award at MedFilm Festival.

For her film Kingdom of Strangers (2022), she was awarded the ARRI Franz Weiser grant. The film also received the Jury awards at Toronto Arab Film Festival, Cairo Int'l Shorts Film Festival and Beirut Shorts.

Randa is a graduate of UCLA's Directing MFA program, where she was recipient of a full-ride scholarship offered to female filmmakers from the Arab world.