Eagles of the Republic reviews – corruption scandals and compromises in post-Mubarak Egypt | Video

SEgyptian filmmaker Tarik Saleh has been outspoken about the corruption and political instability and conspiracies of post-Mubarak Egypt. Now they bring us the third part of the “Cairo trilogy”, after all Nile Hilton event in 2017 and Cairo plot in 2022. This new movie is a black-and-white political thriller set in Egypt today, showing us that everyone in the beautiful world of movies, obsessed with stories created by magicians who believe in their propaganda, can easily be pressured to use political propaganda.

The result is a cynical, desperate, funny film with something of Billy Wilder, or István Szabó’s Mephisto, or Bertolucci’s allegory of fascism The Conformist. For me, it also had similarities to Daniel Kehlmann’s book Director, in the 1930s Austrian film director GW Pabst, after much trial and scorn from Goebbels. Directing Saleh is his former director Fares Fares, playing an aging Egyptian movie star; this is the unflinching image of George Fahmy, a man free to do potboilers to please the public, now being bullied into presiding over a scandalous state-sponsored presidential campaign (with stories of the current president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, jumping in).

Fares’ face, beautiful, shows a clear sense of vanity, as well as pain, worry and self-pity. And his aquiline nose makes him look, perhaps, like a painted eagle, like the eagle of the great officials who have manipulated poor George into selling the sad remnants of his loyalty, calling themselves “republican eagles”. George is identified as a Coptic Christian, which has made him suspicious of the government, although he is not religious, and is separated from his wife (Donia Massoud) and eldest son Ramy (Suhaib Nashwan). Nonsensically, he has a young and untalented film-seeking girlfriend named Donya (Lyna Khoudri), who can’t satisfy him in bed even with Viagra, and tells him disgustedly that the middle-aged moans he makes while sitting down remind him of his father. George is desperate for his son’s forgiveness for abandoning his family and the film shows us how his attempts to buy approval have embarrassed him – such as getting him an expensive watch for his birthday, while Ramy is thrilled with what he got from his friend, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth book.

George finds himself under pressure from the government for his private life, despite being protected by his best friend Rula (Cherien Dabis). When his job dries up, he is surprised to be told that his acting career will only be revived and lead to the dangerous job of the president of the useless silver, which is overseen by the dead-eyed secret police chief Mansour (Amr Waked), and there are subtle threats to Ramy’s life. Poor, caring George finds himself ordered to attend dinner parties and soirees invited by the junta, all of whom claim to admire, dishonestly because of his movie talent.

It is during one of these events that an officer assures the company that the Western elite, who want to end the gains of the Arabs, are in a conspiracy to hide the fact that William Shakespeare was from the Arab world and his name was “Sheikh Zoupir” – which explains, he adds, why he did not like the Jews. This is a consistent error in Saleh’s writings. George flies up with his wings before making a nasty and disturbing descent.