Eight-year-old Toha works as a maid for a wealthy family in Cairo, and is set on hosting a successful birthday party for her best friend: her employer’s daughter. She soon discovers the social hierarchy that divides them in this poignant debut reflecting class schisms in contemporary Cairo. Happy Birthday made its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won Best International Narrative Feature, Best Screenplay in an International Narrative Feature, and the Nora Ephron Award.
Happy Birthday
Contemporary Arab Cinema is co-presented with the Brooklyn Academy of Music and:
This series is made possible through the support of:
Happy Birthday
Virtual Q&A with director Sarah Goher
Tickets: $15 (members), $20 (nonmembers)
"Goher, a screenwriter and producer making her feature debut, proves herself to be a director-writer of uncommon sensitivity. She draws a performance of astonishing depth from Doha Ramadan as Toha."
SPECIAL EVENTS
Virtual Q&A with filmmaker Sarah Goher moderated by series curator Lina Matta
Saturday, Jul. 25 2026, 1:00
- Sarah Goher is an Egyptian-American writer and director, born and raised in the South Bronx. An alumna of NYU Tisch and the Nightingale Bamford School, she worked as a producer on Mohamed Diab’s Cairo 678 (2010), Clash (2016), Amira (2021), and a producer/writer on Marvel Studios' Moon Knight (2022) before making her directorial debut. Cairo 678, Clash and Amira were all shown at ANA. Happy Birthday premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival, where Goher won three awards: Best International Feature, Best International Screenplay, and the Nora Ephron Award for a distinguished female filmmaker. In December 2025, Variety named her one of the top ten directors to watch in 2026.
- Lina Matta is the series curator for Contemporary Arab Cinema, the Director of Shahid AVOD, MBC 4 and the two movie channels, MBC 2 and MBC MAX at MBC Group in Dubai. A film fanatic, Lina watches movies at work and for fun. In her spare time she attends film festivals. If you’re looking for Lina, you may find her eating a frozen dog in Park City, UT, grabbing a felafel sandwich in Toronto or chasing a food truck in Austin, TX. Lina holds an M.A. in Film from Boston University. She’s been a news producer, a TV director, a field audio engineer, an original web content producer and she once worked closely with a Libyan revolutionary!
Tickets: $15 (members), $20 (nonmembers)
This film is part of the following initiatives:
This film is part of the Contemporary Arab Cinema series.
Contemporary Arab Cinema is co-presented with the Brooklyn Academy of Music and:
This series is made possible through the support of:
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