Sara Ishaq's 'The Station' premieres at Cannes Critics' Week

Yemeni-Scottish director Sara Ishaq premieres her fiction debut 'The Station' (Al Mahatta, 2026) at the 79th Cannes Film Festival's Semaine de la Critique. The film transforms a women-only gas station in war-torn Yemen into a precarious oasis of female resistance, freedom, and emotional survival. Shot in Jordan due to security risks, the script was co-written with Nadia Eliewat and inspired by real events. Ishaq, previously Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated for her documentary 'Karama Has No Walls,' shifts to fiction to protect real-life subjects while exploring the invisible consequences of war: family fragmentation, militarized childhood, and intimate strategies of resistance. The gas station, run by Layal, bans men, weapons, and politics, becoming a clandestine salon for tea, hookah, and confidences. The plot follows two sisters trying to save their younger brother from forced recruitment—after age twelve, exemption requires an unaffordable payment. The cast mixes professionals and non-actors from Yemen, Egypt, and Jordan, including Manal Al-Mulaiki, Abeer Mohammed, and Rashad Khaled. Ishaq, an admirer of Elia Suleiman, injects absurdist humor reminiscent of 'Bagdad Café' without neutralizing the harsh reality. The film insists on portraying Yemenis as complex, dignified people full of culture, humor, and love, refusing to reduce the country to a landscape of destruction.