Sara Ishaq’s The Station will open the second edition of the Doha Film Festival, marking the film’s Middle East premiere. The festival runs from November 19 to 27 across venues in the Qatari capital.
The film centers on Layal, who runs a women-only petrol station in a war-torn Yemeni town, a rare sanctuary where women can gather for fuel, conversation and a brief escape from the realities surrounding them. When Layal’s younger brother faces enlistment, she is forced to reconnect with her estranged sister in an attempt to save him, a fictional story inspired by real events and set against the backdrop of Yemen’s ongoing civil war.
Manal Al-Mulaiki stars as Layal, alongside Abeer Mohammed, Rashad Khaled, Saleh Al-marshahi, Fariha Hassan, Randa Mohammed, Fatima Muthanna, Amal Esmail and Shorooq Mohammed.
The Station marks the fiction feature debut of Yemeni-Scottish filmmaker Sara Ishaq. She first gained international attention with her 2012 short documentary Karama Has No Walls, about the 2011 massacre of more than 50 peaceful protesters during the Yemeni Revolution, which earned nominations for both an Academy Award and a BAFTA. She followed that with the feature-length documentary The Mulberry House, a personal family study that premiered at IDFA in 2013. The idea for The Station came from Ishaq’s own experience returning to her hometown of Sanaa in 2015, where she came across a real women-only gas station that inspired the film’s story.
Doha Film Institute CEO Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, who also heads the festival, said The Station embodies the spirit of cinema the institute believes in: stories rarely heard that cross borders and remind audiences of shared humanity. She added that opening the festival with the film means opening a space for dialogue, connection and deeper understanding through cinema. Ishaq described the world of the film as distilling everything she loves about Yemen into a fragile utopia constantly overshadowed by turmoil, calling it ultimately a story about people in all their complexity, contradiction and humanity.
The Station had its world premiere at Cannes Critics’ Week in May, where it was among seven features selected for the section’s competition lineup. Ahead of that premiere, the film also went through the Venice Production Bridge’s Final Cut workshop in late August, part of its path toward completion.
The project has long-standing ties to the Doha Film Institute, which supported its development through its grants programme. It is a Yemeni, Jordanian, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian and Qatari co-production, produced by Screen Project, a Ta Films company, alongside Georges Films, One Two Films, KeplerFilm, BarentsFilm, Setara Films and The Imaginarium Films. Lead producer Nadia Eliewat co-wrote the screenplay with Ishaq, while Paris-based Paradise City handles world sales.
Launched last year by the Doha Film Institute, the festival builds on the foundations of the institute’s long-running, family-focused Ajyal cinema event. Its programme spans venues including Katara Cultural Village, Msheireb Downtown Doha and the Museum of Islamic Art, alongside an International Competition and Industry Days run in partnership with the Qatar Film Committee.
With The Station set to open its second edition, the Doha Film Festival continues positioning itself as a platform for stories from across the region, giving Ishaq’s long-gestating feature debut a high-profile launch ahead of its wider festival run.
