This film won the best screenplay award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival for writer/director, Tarek Saleh, and it's clear to see why. A young man from a fishing village in Egypt gets some news from his local Imam that he has been accepted to Al-Azhar University in Cairo - apparently, quite the honour. On his arrival he is chosen, perhaps for his callowness, to keep an eye on a group of Muslim Brotherhood chaps, who may or may not have had some hand in the death of a fellow student. There's also the small matter of the death of the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar and, more pertinently to the government, who to replace him with. It's a belting little set-up, full of fish-out-of-water vibes and political/religious intrigue.
In fact, the film is almost a carbon copy of Jacques Audiard's classic, A Prophet, but with more Islam. The central character, Adam, played with moist intensity by Tawfeek Barhom, is no mug, but he is naïve to the ways of the big city, and if you replace the Uni with the Corsican prison of Audiard's film, you can pretty much see Tahar Rahim's fearful Malik wandering through proceedings. Look, whether or not Saleh had A Prophet in mind when writing this, you can't pick a much better film of this ilk to pay homage to.
Barhom is only surpassed in the acting stakes by the excellent Fares Fares, who plays Colonel Ibrahim, the shaggy, overlooked secret service agent handling the situation. His put-upon glances and shrugs belie the obvious menace he exudes, particularly noticeable in a scene up a tower where one hard-arse character swiftly becomes a blubbering wreck in his presence.
The story gets slightly baggy in the centre but the machinations of the secret service and the state's relationship with religion manage to keep the tension ticking along well. Watching the dominoes be placed and then topple as both sides jockey for influence is fascinating, and it's all shown from the initially awe-struck viewpoint of Adam. Maybe Saleh's position as a Swedish/Egyptian filmmaker gives him a sort of outsider's perspective, giving the rest of us looking in a chance to digest the internal workings of the country.
On a side note, this film is known as Boy from Heaven outside Aus, Eng, Ire and US - maybe that title sounded too 'faith-based', a proper red flag for most discerning filmgoers. In saying that, Cairo Conspiracy sounds a bit 'straight-to-video' as well. Luckily, the film itself rises above both titles.
Cairo Conspiracy opens at the Luna cinemas on May 4th.
See also:
Obviously, Audiard's brilliant A Prophet (2009) is a touchpoint, but also the religious politics angle brought back Patrice Chéreau's lush Queen Margot (1994).
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