Hendawi will present Simia: Stratagem for Undestining, while El-Said will present the installation Borrowing a Family Album.

Simia: Stratagem for Undestining is a video work accompanied by a series of prints and mixed media paraphilia.

"Collectively, the works respond to the manifestation of Project Simiyaa, a fictitious artificial intelligence programme that aims to create a planned economy and manage infrastructural commons across Africa and the Middle East. In Simia: Stratagem for Undestining, Assem Hendawi uses speculation as a method for worldmaking, setting the stage for other forms of becoming," reads the project's description as published by the Singapore Biennale where it is currently being presented.

The project will be making its European premiere at Berlinale.

Hendawi is an Egyptian artist and researcher who works with videos, computer-based media and text. His work questions historical and sociopolitical events around planetary computation, critical posthumanities, and the way in which technology constructs subjectivity.

Filmmaker Tamer El-Said's Borrowing a Family Album is a work collecting a family’s amateur footage to reclaim a memory of a lost sibling. The installation invites visitors to look for their own recollections in the same footage, creating an act of collective remembrance in the process.

El-Said is an Egyptian filmmaker and producer with a number of films to his name, including Take Me (2004), On a Monday (2005) and In the Last Days of the City, which premiered in 2016 at Berlinale. He is co-founder of several independent initiatives in Cairo, including Cimatheque Alternative Film Centre and Zero Production.

The Berlinale's Forum Expanded showcases documentaries and personal essay films alongside installations, all of which aim at creating images of personal and political legacies.

The Egyptian participation in this year's Berlinale extends also to the Berlinale development programme which will embrace three filmmakers – Adolf El-Assal, Sameh Alaa and Kesmat El-Sayed – among 204 cinema industry professionals.