Tag Archives: Fares Fares

Thinking Aloud About Film: Tarik Saleh and The Cairo Trilogy

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Richard and I were so excited after seeing Eagles of the Republic (2025), that when we learned that it was the third film in a trilogy, we made a point of seeing the other two: The Nile Hilton Incident (2017) and Cairo Conspiracy/ Boy From Heaven (2022). José went even further and also saw his first live action film, made in Sweden, Tommy (2005), and, at least up to now, the only feature film he’s made in the US: The Contractor (2022). Thus the podcast encompasses all of his live-action feature films (he also made Metropia (2009), an animated film) and spans a twenty-period.

Saleh is the offspring of an Egyptian father and a Swedish mother. The Nile Hilton Incident  was set to be filmed in Cairo but Saleh was given a week to flee the country before shooting started. Thus the trilogy is a critique of Egypt that could not be made in Egypt. The films are genre pieces — and are satisfying on that level; you don’t need to know anything about Egypt or Egyptian culture to enjoy them — but they are also serious films about morality, ethics, the extent of corruption, and the limits otherwise good people are willing to go to in order to prosper or even survive. In the podcast we discuss this and contrast with his earlier Swedish film, fascinating in that it makes the gangster’s girlfriend the central figure in a genre piece, and his later American film, in that it points to the limits on free speech currently imposed on American cinema.

 

Aside from all of this, we also linger to appreciate the beauty and expressiveness of the mise-en-scène and encourage everyone to see these marvellous works.

Eagles of the Republic is currently on distribution (I saw it at the MOCKINGBIRD)

The Nile Hilton Incident is available on MUBI

Boy From Heaven/ Cairo Conspiracy is available to see on BBC i-player.

 

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may also be listened to on: Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

 

José Arroyo and Richard Layne

THE CONTRACTOR (Tarik Saleh, 2022)

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At the moment, for the US to lecture any other country about freedom of speech has become a joke. THE CONTRACTOR (2022) is a good examples of American cinema’s limits on critiques of the state, limits that have always been there but now seem more exposed. Tarik Saleh’s most famous works, the Cairo Trilogy, are scathing, funny, dark critiques of the Egyptian State’s culture of corruption that could only be made outside Egypt (the financing is an amalgamation of Swedish, Danish, French and other moneys). THE CONTRACTOR  is Saleh’s only American film and it suffers for being so.

James Harper (Chris Pine) a veteran of various duties is discharged from the army, without pension or medical benefits, for taking steroids necessary for him to overcome injuries incurred on previous tours of duty and continue in the army.The first part of the film overeggs this injustice, showing us Harper as a devoted family man, a regular churchgoer, from an army family dedicated to the service for generations.How does he now provide for his family? By becoming a private contractor. He gets lots of offers but doesn’t want to become a mercenary. Mike (Ben Foster), his best friend, tells him of Rusty Jennings (Keifer Sutherland), who runs a private militia but for the Department of Defence. They pay less, work around the law, but for righteous causes.

When Harper goes to see Rusty, Rusty tells him, ‘We gave them our minds, bodies and spirits and they chewed us up and spit us out. Left us with fear, rage, uncertainty, disillusionment, a sense of abandonment, betrayal and finally a sense of self-loathing and guilt, as if somehow everything that happened to us was our own goddamn fault,’ It’s a great speech and I suspect Sutherland took on the role primarily to be able to say those words. But the film chickens out after that, compromises, and turns routine.

Harper might as well have turned mercenary and gone for the cash because this para-governmental operation is just as dirty as any other. The mission involves stealing a scientific formula that they’re told is harmful but the scientist (Saleh regular Fares Fares) in fact had invented a vaccine that he wanted to make available for free. Harper ends up killing a good man, a family man who believed in science and wanted to contribute to the social good to that mutinational pharmaceutical companies may continue to make money. He’s been lied to, chewed up and spit out just as in the army. In fact, his operation now sets out to kill him: he’s become a loose end. Harper succeeds in getting back home only to find  the  best friend he thought dead is alive and well. Did the man whose life he’s already saved twice betray him? They, eventually team up and get rid of Rusty so that Harper may be reunited with his family.

The film’s action is serviceable, the critique muted. The sub-plot about relations between fathers and sons, sentimental and extraneous. It’s not as funny, sharp or dark as Saleh’s other work. The ending should be much bleaker than it is. But THE CONTRACTOR is not a conventional action thriller either. I liked it a lot more most. It’s interesting to see Pine and Foster reunited after HELL OR HIGH WATER (David Mackenzie, 2016). Eddie Marson has a lovely moment as the head of a half-way house who tragically takes in Harper at a critical juncture; and the individual shots, framings and compositions are just as imaginative as we’ve come to expect from Saleh. But the script is neither fish nor fowl; the film, a work that doesn’t’ live up to its intentions. American cinema can do a muddy critique of something vaguely governmental or paramiltary but can’t seem to critique directly much less surgically, as we see so clearly in Saleh’s other works. I don’t think the fault is with Saleh or the cast.

 

José Arroyo

THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT (Tarik Saleh, 2017)

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THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT (Tarik Saleh, 2017) is a pitch-black Swedish noir, set in Egypt in the days leading up to the 25TH OF JANUARY REVOLUTION in 2011. The film begins in the streets of Cairo as Noredin (Fares Fares), a cop, extorts money from the shopkeepers in his area, just like any old mafia enforcer.  That same evening,  a singer gets killed in a hotel. A Sudanese cleaner sees both the man the singer has been having an affair with and the man who comes in second later to kill her. She’s now a witness. Plus there are also pictures of the before, a couple of having sex. It all  leads to a high-ranking member of government. The film then follows Noredin as he tries to solve the murder, whilst exposing a culture where corruption is like breathing. First, he’s allowed to investigate, then the case is closed, then it gets re-opened again as the various interests map out their possible profit from the case.  No one is ever certain; and no one is completely safe. The question is when does morality revolt? Is it at murder? Of foreigners? Of locals? Of kin?

 

THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT (2017) is the first film in Tarik Saleh’s Cairo trilogy, but many elements I now recognise as characteristic of Saleh’s work are already evident: the theme of corruption, the filming of streets from inside moving cars, the hand-held camera, the expressive play with focus. This is perhaps his most accessible film, as it’s the most traditionally NOIR: the dark streets, whorehouses, songbirds, the moral maze that is the city, its various layers (the homeless, the drug addicts, the foreign workers), the sexual blackmail, corrupt cops,  untouchable upper-classes; the hero whose outward corruption encases a basic decency.

What’s really missing, unusually for noir, is desire. Our hero is a widower, who does drink, and he does have sex with the chanteuse, but what really propels him seems to be a search for justice in a world where none is to be had. A classic existential dilemma.  For his uncle, life is cheap and there’s money to be made. For our corrupt policeman, there has to be something more; and perhaps he finds it in the closing scene, with the people rising on January 25th, beating him short of injury because ‘we’re not like them’, ie, him. There are a couple of nods to Youssef Chahine films (the chase through an external staircase of a modern building, the group prayer on the busy streets). My admiration for Fares has only increased; he’s got that ordinary/ extraordinary quality that all great stars: beautiful in some angles, almost ugly in others, totally at ease and capable of expressing anything. He’s been excellent playing very different characters in each film in the trilogy. A wonderful noir. On MUBI.

José Arroyo

THE CAIRO CONSPIRACY/ BOY FROM HEAVEN (Tarik Saleh, 2022)

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THE CAIRO CONSPIRACY/ BOY FROM HEAVEN (2022) is the second in a trilogy of films that culminates in EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC, the film that so excited me last week. This one confirms that Tarik Saleh is a major filmmaker. The film begins with the contention that there’s always been a struggle between Church and State in Egypt, and that the state has always attempted to control the Al-Azhar, which the movie depicts as a combination of university but also seat of religious power. When the Grand Imam dies, the NSA (National Security) gets involved to secure the election of a new religious leader that is more in tune with the President’s policies. Adam (Tawfeek Barhom), a young and innocent student from a provincial family gets drawn in to all the political machinations within the Al-Azhar and in the country at large.

 

Cairo through a car

 

This is a tense conspiracy thriller, with murder and threats of violence at every corner, and with the type of Jesuitical discourse so common to all religious hard-heads. Will Adam’s genuine faith, goodness and smarts save him from all the evil forces hand-stringing him?The film has a wonderful contrast between the city — noisy, dirty, usually captured from inside a moving vehicle (I think because Saleh wasn’t allowed to film in Cairo proper) –and the neat, orderly and imposing linearity of the mosque/university; one dark and dirty, the other white, clean, natural light on the mosque’s white marble. Anyone familiar with Medieval History, Phillip Pullman’s novels (THE GOLDEN COMPASS), or any depiction of Vatican politics (CONCLAVE) will be familiar with the structures of this world.

The mosque

The Mosque

As to the visuals, nothing is careless. There’s a section of the film where Adam, the young hero, is directed to become close to the Muslim Brotherhood. In his first attempt (a) he’s far away from the group in a wide long-shot with the camera on the ground; as he gets closer  to being accepted (b), the camera lifts, the distance shortens, the shots get narrower; until when he’s successfully infiltrated the group (c), his face occupies the larger part of a group of  faces, with his occupying half the frame, the others out of focus. Finally (d), in a different type of framing, he’s an indistinguishable member of the group.  And this is just one example of how this film tells its story visually. It’s brilliant.

The film is also very moving. One feels for this boy caught in this web that is beyond his control, constantly threatened with his and his father’s life, for things that are not of his doing. How will he get out? At the beginning of the film, the father smells the hands of Adam’s brother, notices that he’s been smoking, and belts all of their hands. Each is responsible for the other; the actions of one, affect all. This is a theme this wonderful film develops to the end. Fares Fares is superb as the NSA operative pulling the strings. It’s on BBC Iplayer and I highly recommend. Richard and I will be podcasting on the trilogy soon.

Rhyming beginning an end:

More examples of the visuals, the brilliance of framing and composition, the sheer imaginative beauty, each with its own purpose, may be seen below:

José Arroyo

 

Eagles of the Republic (Tarek Saleh, 2025)

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EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC is my first Tarik Saleh film. I knew nothing about the film or the director when I saw it yesterday. But I returned home so elated from the film that I looked him up, found that the film is the third in a trilogy; and promptly ordered the other two: BOY FROM HEAVEN/ (AKA CAIRO CONSPIRACY, 2002) and THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT, 2017) all starring Fares Fares. What gave me so much pleasure initially was the mise-en-scène. It’s not just every frame a painting, but every shot beautiful to look at, expressive, feeling direct and propulsive, but conveying various things at once. Saleh takes my least favourite shot in contemporary cinema, a steadycam following the protagonist from the back, and makes it tense, sad, poetic. Here the camera is focussed on the neck, like the protagonist is a target, in front of him everything is out of focus, unclear, dangerous, difficult to manoeuvre, entrapping. And that’s just one example. It’s like reading a novel and finding a beautiful sentence one wants to underline, to return to and savour. If one could underline passages in films, this one would be full of ink.
The film is about state corruption and about how even the most powerful artists are limited in the ways they can resist it. Here Egypt’s most famous actor George Fahmy (Fares Fares) is asked to star in a biopic of Egypt’s real-life authoritarian President (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi). He initially and very tactfully refuses but then finds he’s lost his trailer at the studio, his next film’s been given to another actor, his favourite co-star has been blacklisted, and, the clincher, something might happen to his son if he doesn’t. So he does. It’s a world in which, as one character says, ‘principles are like AIDS’. And yet he can’t stop being himself; an artist who even forced to act against his will can’t stop trying to make the dreck better, more truthful, more entertaining. He also can’t stop himself from chasing women, even the most powerful general’s wife, and hopping from frying pans to fires. The film’s achievement is to evoke the arbitrary deadlyness of authoritarianism — it can destroy your life when least expected, at someone else’s will for the most minor reason — whilst doing so with a light hand: it’s a funny, sexy, film. The deadly authoritarianism is what people live under but people are still humans looking for sex, love, a laugh, a solution to particular circumstances, all the while knowing that a mere word, overheard or mis-interpreted by the powerful, can alter or end one’s life.
EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC is also a cinephile film, in love with Egyptian film history, and also cleverly citing a broader cinematic culture (from Antonioni to De Mille, via Riefenstahl). Saleh is the son of an Egyptian immigrant and a Swedish mother, who was himself forced to flee Egypt in 2015, just as he was about to begin filming THE NILE HILTON INCIDENT. EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC is a film that couldn’t be made in Egypt. It’s also a film that couldn’t be made in the US today (and Trump’s America is ripe for such filming if people weren’t so afraid). At a time where being famous is seen as a superpower, the film tells us that even superpowers have their limitations. At the end of the film, George has survived and is gambling with people next to some rubble on the outskirts of Cairo. But his co-star has been killed for not wanting to offer sexual favours to generals, his manager tortured and executed for being gay, he’s survived an attempted coup, exchanged his principles for the life of his son. If as the film says, citing Becket, ‘words are the clothes thoughts wear’, the film’s Egypt is a place where you have to be super-careful about your wardrobe.
It’s a thrilling film to see; and an important one. It was nominated for the Palme D’or and won all kinds of Swedish Film Awards. I was sad to be the only person in the audience watching it; and there’s perhaps more to say about how films have lost their place in the cultural conversation. But that will have to wait for another time.
Jose Arroyo