Writer-director Tarik Saleh’s Cairo Conspiracy, also known Boy From Heaven, put his Cairo trilogy on the world stage when it became Egypt’s submission for the 2022 international feature Oscar and advanced to the shortlist. This year, the Swedish Film Institute’s Oscar committee selected the trilogy’s final chapter, Eagles of the Republic, as Sweden’s 2026 Oscar contender.
The political thriller dives into the heart of the Egyptian film industry and follows Egypt’s biggest movie star, played by Fares Fares, as he’s pulled into a labyrinth of corruption and state-driven propaganda after being pushed to lead a government-commissioned film. His descent becomes even more dangerous when he begins an affair with the enigmatic wife of the general controlling the production. The cast includes Lyna Khoudri, Amr Waked, Zineb Triki, Cherien Dabis and Sherwan Haji.
Shot in Istanbul and completed in Gothenburg, Eagles of the Republic premiered in competition at Cannes before heading to festivals including Toronto. The score is by two-time Academy Award winner Alexandre Desplat, and Playtime is handling international sales.
Saleh, born in Stockholm to a Swedish mother and Egyptian father, spoke with THR about confronting power, life in exile, the strange resonance of recent comments by U.S. President Donald Trump regarding the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the role filmmakers must play in a post-truth era.
I find it interesting that you made a film about a film star and the making of a film, so there’s all sorts of meta stuff. And you are currently in Hollywood to screen it. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?
Yes, I am actually one of the rare filmmakers, even here in America, who has actually worked here a lot. It’s very rare that people have shot in Hollywood. I did when I directed Westworld, and then when I did reshoots for The Contractor during COVID. I was staying in the same hotel that I am in right now, the Roosevelt, which is this Hollywood hotel that has all these rumors of being haunted.
But the screenings I have had here have been magical, because in so many ways, this film is almost an homage to something like Sunset Boulevard. I am obsessed with Billy Wilder and with the way he was playing with fiction and truth. He had this tension between the two, and people don’t realize it now. When you revisit Sunset Boulevard now, you realize how authentic that film is, what a dark portrait of this city it is. Cecil B. DeMille plays himself in the film, and he was trying to get Greta Garbo to play Norma Desmond. It was all that playing with reality in a way.
What I’m trying to do is tell fictional stories in the real world. So, it was really moving to show the film here, because people feel so much love for cinema in this city. This is the mecca of film. And, at the same time, we feel the threats. Because when truth is under attack, in the news, in politics, then all of a sudden the question is: What is our role in telling fictional stories? If what is being told by politicians is fiction, what are we going to do? Are we going to start to do reality? It is a complicated relationship, and of course, that’s partly what the film is about. It’s about when you’re forced, as an artist, to do propaganda.
Watching Eagles of the Republic and looking around the world nearly felt like you timed the film to the post-truth age…
Unfortunately. I wasn’t very happy about that. When I wrote the script and when I directed it, I did not know where the world was going to head. I knew what was happening in Egypt. I knew that there was always this tension there, because the film industry in Egypt is one of the biggest film industries in the world. It serves one billion people with cinema and television. Of course, these mega stars in Egypt become iconic in a way that can only be compared to Hollywood’s Golden Age. People project their dreams onto them. And the Egyptian army is huge. It is one of the 10 biggest armies in the world.
When [Abdel Fattah] El-Sisi took power through a military coup [in 2013], the first thing he did was to decide that the army was going to take control of the film industry. And the Army has an [affiliated] company that is called United, which accounts for 30 percent of the country’s economy. It’s a huge problem. When they took over the film industry, it was like mobsters took over the big studios and production companies. The first thing they decided to do was a propaganda television series of El-Sisi’s rise to power.
And your film mirrors a lot of what happened with that project?
El-Sisi is a short man, 166 [centimeters, about 5′ 4″]. And he looks like me — bald. And so, of course, they decided to cast this tall, handsome actor with a lot of hair on his head who’s one of Egypt’s biggest movie stars.
The absurdity is that, just a month ago, he was elected into parliament, as a sort of sign of appreciation for his patriotic services. Some of my colleagues in Egypt were working on that television series, and I knew that they hated the president, but they had been forced to do this. When I started writing the script, I realized, “Oh, my God, this is about all of us, in a way.” Because we are living in this time now, and we have a privilege. The question is not about the people who don’t have a choice. That’s not an interesting, dramatic proposal.
The interesting proposal is for us who have a choice is: will we speak up? Will we stand up? Because it can have consequences if you have a leader who is willing to go after people who criticize him, and we see that every day now. Unfortunately, we see it in the West too, and I was surprised to see how fast it went. I thought people were going to be more resilient, but the film industry has always had that complication. Because it’s so expensive to make films, that is part of the negotiation we have: how much can we bite the hand that feeds us? It’s an interesting conflict.
You live in Sweden and aren’t allowed in Egypt, right? Can you explain your situation for those who are not familiar with what happened?
I was thrown out of Egypt in 2015 [before The Nile Hilton Incident, the first film in the Cairo trilogy, came out]. So, it’s 10 years now that I haven’t been able to go back. Of course, it’s heartbreaking because I love Egypt, and I love the people of Egypt. It’s a big part of me, and I want to show it to my daughters, their second country. People ask me: “Was it worth it? Was it worth it making these three films and not being able to return?” And I always tell them: “No, it wasn’t worth it. But sometimes you have to do it anyway.”
You have to do it because as artists we have only one obligation, and it’s to our audience. That’s it. Because art is an intimate conversation with a stranger. It has to be absolutely honest. And if you’re not willing to pay the price, [you] should be working on something else.
Hannah Arendt, when she wrote about trying to understand how Nazism and fascism could become so big, she said the perfect subject for tyranny is not a committed Nazi or committed Communist. The perfect subject is someone who has stopped making a distinction between truth and fiction, because once that happens, you can be told myths about the others and that they are your enemy, and that you have to extinguish them.
This is so dangerous, and that’s why, if we as artists are not willing to say “The Emperor is naked. The Emperor is not who he says he is,” then who will? Just the other day, I saw that journalist ask this question in the Oval Office of [Saudi Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman. What a brave woman! She knew she was going to get attacked. I think that’s real bravery.
I’m a filmmaker, and I love cinema. So for me, this film is also so much an homage to cinema itself and the power of cinema. It is also playing with the concept of a movie star and the relationship between an actor and a director.
Tarik Saleh
Are you really done with the Cairo trilogy, or is there a chance that we will get to see a fourth movie in the series?
I am done with the trilogy. I’ve always dreamt of going to Alexandria, because that is really my favorite city in Egypt — the city of Broken Dreams. That’s also a very good place for noir. What I’m writing now is about protagonists who actually have plans. In these three films, in a way, things happen to the characters. The films in the trilogy are about men who bend until they break. Cairo’s Arabic name al-Qāhirah means “the defeater.” So, it’s about how when you come to Cairo, you get defeated. Have you been to Cairo?
No, I haven’t. But my father, who grew up in Communist Hungary, says it has been his favorite city to visit abroad.
All of Central Europe, especially Romania, not so much Hungary, had a big relationship with Egypt during the socialist era. So, if you go to Egypt, you will probably recognize some things that you probably find in Hungary too. You have this country with an amazing history. Then comes the plan economy of communism, with these block buildings and control and all that stuff, and then raw capitalism after that, the most vulgar version of capitalism. I think that’s part of why the West has been so nice to El-Sisi, because you can go and have a Frappuccino at Starbucks and go to the Imax theater in the big shopping malls. But if you criticize the president, you get picked up in the middle of the night. So, it’s sort of the new version of tyranny.
You shot Eagles of the Republic in Turkey?
Yes, it’s shot in Istanbul, and it was amazing. The whole military parade is shot at Atatürk Airport. I am a military parade fanatic. I’m a connoisseur when it comes to military parades.
Wait, what?! Tell me more about that, please.
It’s horrible with military parades — they show and project power to your own people. It’s not about showing other countries [strength]. It’s about putting your own people in place. The idea is a display of power to silence people.
China does the best military parades in the world. It’s great staging. I mean, as a director, they are extremely impressive. And the second best in the world are the Russians. Of course, they are exceptional at it. And then the North Koreans are in third place, and Egypt I would place number four. France is five.
But America is very far down that list, because America actually uses its army to invade countries rather than do parades. It’s the best military in the world, but they don’t parade.
Is there anything else you’d like to mention or highlight, before we wrap up?
I’m a cinema activist. I would say that a country without cinemas is a country without a soul. And there [are] companies that want us to isolate ourselves with our phones. Because [when] we get lonely, we get angry. Whereas when we go into a cinema together with strangers, we travel to a different place. We are someone else for two hours. That is an act of empathy. I think it expanded my horizon in a way that I’m eternally thankful for.
Now, when I make films, the idea that if you can be an Egyptian movie star for two hours, even if he takes the wrong decisions, you can go out from the cinema wherever you are – whether you are in London, Los Angeles or Zimbabwe – and think about “How does this relate to my life and to the decisions I’m taking?” That is what’s unique with cinema, and that’s why I believe that we have to fight for cinema in cinemas.
Check out more international Oscar contenders:
Italy’s Oscar Contender ‘Familia’ Takes a Genre-Bending Deep Dive Into Trauma and Abuse
In Estonia’s Oscar Submission ‘Rolling Papers,’ Young People Face Existential Questions
Why Lithuanian Oscar Contender ‘The Southern Chronicles’ Looks Like a Film From the 1990s
