Arab cinema or Arabic cinema (Arabic: السينما العربية, romanized: al-sīnemā al-ʿArabīyah) refers to the film industry of the Arab world. Most productions come from Egyptian cinema, and Cairo has been the capital of film industry in the Arab world since the early 20th century to the present day.
The first screening of a motion picture in Egypt occurred in Alexandria in 1896 by the French Lumière Brothers. The Egyptian industry developed from silent movies to talkies, with musicals being the bulk of the productions in the 1930s and 1940s. Of the first Arab-produced films was the 1923 Egyptian film Barsoum Looking for a Job, and Laila, released in Egypt in 1927, while the first Arabic speaking film was Awlad El-Zawat, also released in Egypt in 1932. Studio Misr, founded in 1935, was the first national studio of its kind in the Arab world. The period from the late 1940s to 1960s has been described as "the golden age of Arab cinema", as Arab actors from across the Middle East headed to stardom in Cairo. During this period, notable actors included Hind Rostom, Mahmoud el-Meliguy, Anwar Wagdi, Feyrouz and Soad Hosny. In the 1950s, Egypt's cinema industry was the world's third largest. In 1952, the Egyptian Catholic Center for Cinema Festival was founded to become the first annual film festival in the Arab World. In 1976, the Cairo International Film Festival was established, becoming the first International film festival to be held in the Arab world. Egypt has also contributed to the action genre with actors such as Youssef Mansour who became famous in the 1990s for his martial arts films.