Tarik Saleh and Fares Fares Conclude Cairo Trilogy with New Ideas

We have more ideas that I'm working with. Cairo is not a place for me, but a "state of mind". These films are about someone who is crushed by a system. The new stories are more about people who may control things themselves, says Tarik Saleh.

Fares Fares adds:

The three films in the trilogy are more about the theme.

The political thriller "Eagles of the Republic" was preceded by "The Nile Hilton Incident" and "Boy from Heaven", all starring Fares Fares in the lead role. What these films have in common is that they take place in Cairo and that the main characters are men who are being crushed by the system.

In the new film, Fares plays a popular actor who falls out of favor with the authorities and feels forced to accept the lead role in a propaganda film that praises the country's president. Thus, he is drawn into a complicated game.

Arabic impresses

Tarik Saleh is very impressed with his lead actor's Arabic with an Egyptian accent.

He has really got it now after three films. People who have seen "Eagles of the Republic" say that it is very impressive.

Tarik Saleh means that it is wrong to say that his films are very political.

I see Sweden in the film, that it is the men in uniform who rule the world. I have talked to people in the Arab countries who sadly say that they thought their countries would be influenced by the West, not that it would be the other way around, that Western countries would become more totalitarian.

I believe that these old guys who rule now are so old that they don't care about the consequences. A kind of doomsday politics, he adds.

Banned in Egypt

Tarik Saleh continues:

We are filmmakers, we have an enormous responsibility. Artists should stand on the side of the little man and not be judgmental.

Tarik Saleh is banned in Egypt after his films, but they have a million audience through underground distribution, not least via the internet.

Families sit and watch the films, he says.

That his films are controversial in Egypt is noticeable in Cannes, where there are Egyptians who don't dare attend the gala premiere for fear of being photographed. And the director and his lead actor hope that the screenings here will give the film not only prizes but also help to sail out into the world.