Tag Archives: The Nile Hilton Incident

Thinking Aloud About Film: Tarik Saleh and The Cairo Trilogy

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

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 NILE HILTON INCIDENT (Tarik Saleh, 2017)

Uncategorized, , , ,

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

Eagles of the Republic (Tarek Saleh, 2025)

Uncategorized, , , , ,

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