Arab cinematic production started in Egypt with the first news film in 1909, and silent movies in the 1920s. However, the foundations of the Arab film industry were not laid until 1935 when Misr Bank established Studio Misr in Egypt. The following decade witnessed the rapid development of the Egyptian film industry. By 1948, six further studios had been built and a total of 345 full-length features produced. In the years after World-War-II, cinema was the most profitable industrial sector in Egypt after the textile industry.

Egyptian cinema, in all its popular genres, seeks to entertain. Musicals are a dominant genre together with melodrama. This is followed by farce, and to a certain extent, adventure. Egypt’s film industry is star led and is watched across the Arab world.

Over 10% of films produced in Egypt between 1930 and 1993 were literary adaptations. Realist literature played a decisive role in establishing realist cinema in Egypt, and owes a great deal to the influence of the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz. In particular, Mahfouz co-operated with the Egyptian director Salah Abu-Seif, resulting in nine scripts in 1948 alone. Two adaptations of Mahfouz novels directed by Abu-Seif count among the most important films of Egyptian Realism: Cairo 30, and Beginning and End.

Egyptian Realism used the melodrama aspects of the commercial genre. The "bad guys" were generally old-moneyed land owners, and the films emphasised the evils of poverty. The change brought by New Realism is mainly in its use of the action and police genre, and the identification of new enemies: unscrupulous businessmen, the corrupt nouveaux riches, and uncontrolled materialism. New Realism offers the possibility of social mobility, making the determinism of Realism outdated. The new heroes take the initiative, defend themselves, and are not afraid to use violence against the crooks. Their moral struggle is against materialism, egotism, and corruption. As such, they are guardians of the family and of traditional social norms. The Bus Driver (1982) by Atef El-Tayeb is a typical example of New Realism.

The roots of much Arab cinema outside Egypt lay in the use of the medium as part of resistance to colonialism. In Algeria, the provisional Algerian government residing in Tunis formed the Service de Cinema National in 1958. After the land reforms of 1971, a so-called New Cinema in Algeria began gradually to open up to subjects other than the war of liberation. Among the subjects that it was concerned with are the social injustices of post-colonial society, emigration to France, bureaucracy, and female emancipation, and since the 1990s, Islamic fundamentalism. By contrast to the studio-based and star led Egyptian cinema, Algerian cinema is mostly in outside settings and uses amateur actors.

Like Algerian revolutionary cinema, Syrian cinema has also been highly politicised. In 1972, the Alternative Cinema in Syria articulated its orientations. It consciously opposed commercial Egyptian cinema, and its focus was pan-Arab nationalism and social justice. At the heart of this is the Palestinian question. The Alternative Syrian Cinema movement included Palestinian and Lebanese film makers, as well as certain Egyptian directors such as Taufik Salih. He produced The Duped (1972) based on the realist novel Men Under the Sun by the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani.

Following the Arab defeat in the six day war in 1967, there was a shift away from official ideologies and political discourses, as can be seen in films such as Omar Gatlato (1976) and Adventures of a Hero (1976) by the Algerian Merzak Allouache, and Stars in Broad Daylight (1988) by the Syrian Usama Mohammad. The genre of Satirical Realism, with its ironic distortions, questions the realist representation and subverts its idealistic and propagandistic contents, particularly in relation to social liberation, progress, and modernity. This includes the use of anti-heroes such as Hassan Terro, the reluctant resistance fighter in the film of the Algerian Mohammad Lakhdar Hammina; and the Syrian film The Nights of the Jackal (1989) by Abdel-Latif Abdel-Hamid. The theme of empty patriarchy (in the family, and at the levels of society and state politics) became prominent in films such as Wedding in Galilee (1989) by the Palestinian Michel Khleifi, and The Half-Meter Incident (1981) by the Syrian Samir Zikra. In particular, the works of Khleifi mark a new, more critical and stylistically lyrical, treatment.

Arab film-makers are increasingly attracting critical acclaim, such as Cannes Film Festival awards for the Lebanese Ziad Douairi, and the Palestinians Rashid Mashrawi, Michel Khleifi, and Elia Suleiman. However, Arab film industries (as with many film industries worldwide) have been persistently undermined by little or no national funding, censorship, the advent of satellite television, piracy, and an under-developed system for intellectual property exploitation. This has lead Arab film-makers to increasing dependence on co-productions (particularly with Europe). While co-productions create the possibility of artistic dialogue, there is still no long-term substitute to having a nationally-based infrastructure of support. Such backing is essential if Arab cinema is to step-up its international visibility and its engagement with contemporary issues and concerns.

Mona Tayara-Deeley