Tarik Saleh returns to Cannes Competition with Eagles Of The Republic, the final instalment of his Cairo trilogy. It follows 2017’s The Nile Hilton Incident, which won the World Cinema Dramatic grand jury prize at Sundance, and Cairo Conspiracy, the best screenplay winner in Cannes’ 2022 Competition.
Fares Fares again leads the cast in the story of an adored Egyptian actor who is pressured into creating a propaganda film for the country’s authoritarian regime — with terrifying results. As with all the films in the trilogy, Eagles Of The Republic was filmed outside Egypt, with Istanbul doubling for Cairo.
Born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Egyptian father, Saleh has not set foot in Egypt since he was expelled in 2015, just days before he had planned to shoot The Nile Hilton Incident there. “I love Egypt,” says Saleh. “It’s a place I really, really miss.”
This is said without a hint of self-pity. He does not consider his position nearly as difficult as his friend, Iranian Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi, “who is sort of enemy number one of Iran and now Trump hates him too. It’s a totally different thing — I feel like Ron Howard compared to him.”
Tellingly, Saleh says he is most inspired as a filmmaker by émigré directors such as Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Milos Forman. “To understand Sunset Boulevard, you have to understand where Wilder comes from,” he says of the Austria-Hungary-born filmmaker who emigrated to the US in 1934. Czechoslovakia-born Forman’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest “is not just a film or entertainment; there’s something deeper. He’s trying to tell a western audience, ‘Listen, this thing can happen here too. Do not be comfortable, or think this concerns somewhere far away.’”
Eagles Of The Republic paints a tough picture of authoritarian
politics in Egypt under president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. But for Saleh, the film is not really about Egyptian politics per se. “I’ve been accused of being a political filmmaker, but I don’t like that description — I don’t feel I am one,” says Saleh. “Politics is about the relationship between power and the collective. I am talking about individuals and the consequences of their decisions. My films are not there to change the political reality.”
Edge of reason
Saleh does not care what the Egyptian government thinks about his film. “It is not for them,” he says. “I am trying to have an honest conversation about the conditions of a human being living in this world, and how much you can bend a man before he breaks.”
Furthermore, the film is not so much about Egypt as about Cairo. “For me, Cairo is a state of mind, it is not a place. It is where you come to be defeated,” says the filmmaker, pointing out the Arabic name for Cairo means ‘the conqueror’. “You think you will make it in the city, but you are going to be broken by it.”
The common thread running through each of the films in the Cairo trilogy is about people trying to fight their destiny. “Ultimately all of us have to meet our Cairo and be defeated. That is a tragedy, but it is also very beautiful.”
It gives little away of the plot to say the lead character, played mesmerically by Fares Fares, is tested to the extreme as the film plays out. “He’s my best friend and the godfather of my children,” says Saleh. “So, when I look at him when we start shooting, I’m always worried I’m going to see the Fares [I know]. But he transforms in front of the camera into someone else. It’s so strange to me. There are sides he shows in front of the camera that he never shows in private.”
Eagles Of The Republic has a $10m budget, making it one of the most expensive Arabic-language productions to date, even though it is very much a European-financed film. It is lead produced through Sweden’s Unlimited Stories and Apparaten as well as France’s Memento Production, and co-produced with Denmark, Finland and Germany. Playtime Group handles international sales.
Despite the high budget, it was “easy” to finance, insists Saleh. “I felt very supported from great producers. I work with the same people, especially Alexandre Mallet-Guy from Memento — we’ve had success together with the two films before this. He strongly believed we should reach higher this time.”
Eagles Of The Republic is pitched as an international political thriller aimed at a broad audience. “As filmmakers today, we have a huge responsibility — film is in an existential place,” says Saleh. “You can’t be boring. That’s the number-one rule.”
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