Pauline Beugnies
2025
Belgium, France, Egypt
French, English, Arabic
fiction
drama | psychological
28 minutes
Tarantula (BE) | co-produced by Le Hangar (FR)
Aurian, a 27-year-old Belgian, lives the life of a privileged expatriate in the mythical city of Cairo. His destiny catches up with him when he finally has a mystical encounter with his Sufi neighbour, who lives on the roof of his building. What if Aurian started to look at the world and the people around him differently?
Pauline Beugnies (1982) is an author, photographer, and filmmaker from Charleroi, Belgium. She lived in Cairo for five years, where she learned Arabic. Now based in Brussels, she maintains a strong connection with Egypt. For a decade, she documented the emancipation of Egyptian youth through various mediums: photo exhibitions, a web documentary Sout El Shabab (The Voice of the Youth) for France Culture in 2012, the photo book Génération Tahrir in 2016, and her first feature-length documentary, Rester Vivants. The film premiered internationally at the Dok Leipzig Festival in 2017, received the SCAM 2017 Audiovisual Documentary Award, and was nominated for Best Documentary at the Magritte Awards in 2018. Her photography has also been widely recognised; notably, in 2013, she won the Nikon Press Photo Award for her series Battir, l’intifada Verte.
In 2020, Pauline debuted her first fiction work, Shams, a short film shot in Cairo. The film was awarded prizes at the Brussels Short Film Festival, Mix Milano, Thessaloniki’s International Short Film Festival, and Cambria in California. In 2021, her second documentary, SHIFT, was released, telling the story of a former platform economy courier. More recently, Pauline contributed to the creation of a theatrical work titled Mawda, ça veut dire tendresse, based on the story of Mawda, a two-year-old Kurdish girl killed by a Belgian police officer. In 2022, her latest feature-length documentary, Petites, which revisits the trauma of the Dutroux case for the children of that era, had its world premiere in international competition at Hot Docs. Pauline is currently working on the script for her first fiction feature film, C’est tout ce qu’on aura.
– Rester Vivants (2017, feature documentary)
– Shams (2020, short fiction)
– SHIFT (2021, feature documentary)
– Petites [The End of Innocence] (2022, feature documentary)
– Partout la lumière (2025, short fiction)
In Development
– C’est tout ce qu’on aura (feature fiction)
With EVERYWHERE THE LIGHT, Pauline Beugnies continues her exploration of the relationship between the East and the West, a theme already central to her work. After several years and two films—Rester Vivants, a feature documentary, and Shams, a short fiction film—she gradually came to understand the nature of her deep connection to Egypt. This bond lies, in part, in a way of embracing the unexpected and recognizing our powerlessness in the face of life's uncertainties.
This reflection emerged over time, shaped by everyday experiences—like hearing a simple "Inch’Allah" in the packed Cairo metro when asking a seemingly straightforward question. Initially perceived as an evasion, this phrase gradually revealed itself as a serene acceptance of the unpredictable. This realization profoundly reshaped her perception of Islam, and particularly Sufism, sparking the desire to make it the heart of this project.
As in her previous films, Pauline Beugnies grounds EVERYWHERE THE LIGHT in reality and intimacy. For the screenplay, she collaborated with Mathieu Marie, her husband, a Catholic religion professor and specialist in interfaith dialogue, whose experience with the Sufi movement in Egypt and Brussels brings an essential dimension to the film.
Ammar Abu Bakr plays a crucial role in shaping the film’s visual identity. A visual artist whose work explores Sufi rituals, he has collaborated with Pauline Beugnies on multiple occasions. As the film’s art director, he brought an intimate understanding of this world and helped craft its aesthetic alongside the director. His involvement, alongside Mathieu Marie, is reflected in the film’s very essence.
In a time when religion is often seen as divisive, EVERYWHERE THE LIGHT offers a rare perspective on contemporary Islam through spirituality. By approaching the search for self from this angle, the film seeks to open a space for dialogue and emotion—one that is accessible to all.
In this contemporary tale of expatriation, Pauline Beugnies captures Cairo, a city she deeply loves. She takes us on a mysterious and spiritual journey where reality drifts into a trance.
