LOVE LMAGINED

Egypt I 2025 I Arabic dialogue with Swedish subtitles l 110 min

About Film

In her first feature-length fiction film, Love Imagined, Egyptian director Sarah Rozik presents a distinctive romantic musical that chooses to speak to emotions through imagination and music, placing love in a free space far from rigid realism. The film had its world premiere at the 8th El Gouna Film Festival (October 2025), where it screened in the Official Selection (Out of Competition) and received notable critical acclaim, recognized as a remarkable cinematic experience in both form and tone.

Set in a world where reality intersects with imagination, music becomes a central narrative element — not merely accompanying scenes, but serving as a language to express longing, hesitation, desire, and all that cannot easily be spoken. Love Imagined does not aim to tell a conventional love story; instead, it captures the very feeling of love: how it is born, how it takes shape in the imagination, and how it accompanies its characters as a dream, a possibility, or a space of refuge.

What distinguishes the film is its bold blending of romance, music, and fantasy within a delicate visual construction that relies on rhythm, movement, and sound as integrated dramatic elements. The performances are marked by lightness and sincerity, while the soundtrack gives the film a dreamlike quality, making the experience feel like an extended emotional state rather than a linear narrative.

The film belongs to a contemporary feminist cinema that approaches love from an intimate and personal perspective, without direct messaging or pretension. It grants imagination its place as a creative force capable of reshaping — or gently questioning — reality. This sensibility contributed to the film’s warm reception from both critics and audiences during its screening in El Gouna.

As the closing film of the Malmö Arab Film Festival, Love Imagined offers a celebratory and heartfelt cinematic moment, ending the program on a poetic and human note. Festival audiences are invited to a special closing night conversation with director Sarah Rozik and the film’s cast, celebrating a work that believes in love, in imagination, and in cinema as an open space for dreaming.