THEAND EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC
Type: political-detective melodrama
Direction: Tarik Saleh. With Fares Fares, Lyna Khoudri, Amr Waked, Zineb Triki, Cherien Dabis, Nael, Ahmed Khairy, Suhaib Nashwan, Donia Massoud
With this film, in competition last year at Cannes, the director Tarik Saleh (born in Sweden to Egyptian parents who emigrated there) concludes later Murder in Cairo And Conspiracy in Cairo his trilogy on the land he can no longer return to.
At the center of the story is an Egyptian film star who fell into disgrace because he paid little attention to religious orthodoxyGeorge Fahmy (played by the director’s fetish actor, the Lebanese Fares Fares) who accepts – or rather: cannot help but accept – to star in a film that reconstructs the rise of President Al-Sisi.
Lyna Khoudri and Fares Fares in “The Eagles of the Republic”. (© Yigit Eken)
Separated from his wife and with a lover who is mistaken for his daughter, Fahmy can’t resist the magnetic charm of the general’s wife who is supervising the filming and so he ends up being dragged into a game of favors and compromises that will make him discover the dark sides of Egypt.
Saleh builds on this story a very branched fresco that does not hide the violent and blackmail side of powerinterweaves comedy and thriller and does not forget to highlight the political meanings of what he is showing (which Italians have had the opportunity to experience with the case of Giulio Regeni).
For those who want to discover the most disturbing side of Egypt.
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