Tarik Saleh is a Swedish filmmaker of Egyptian descent on his father’s side who also set the plot of his previous and most famous film in Egypt. “The Nile Hilton Incident” was an exciting thriller set at the dawn of the revolution there, and the film that won him the award for best screenplay at Cannes was set in Egypt. Although “Cairo Conspiracy”, which can also be found under the name “Boy from Heaven”, is nominally a Swedish film and was the country’s candidate for the Oscar, not only does it take place in Egypt, but it was also filmed in Arabic. and actors from Arab countries perform there, or have their roots there, just like Saleh.
As the name itself suggests, “Cairo Conspiracy” is a political – espionage thriller set in modern Egypt and problematizing the relationship between the church and the state there. Although Egypt is nominally a secular state, just like in the vast majority of Arab countries, the Islamic church there has a very important say and religious leaders are very much listened to. A new student at the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo will also be drawn into the intrigue surrounding the election of a new imam. Adam (Palestinian Tawfeek Barhom, who we remember from Abu-Assad’s “The Idol”) is the son of a fisherman from a small town in the north of the country who is overjoyed after learning that he has been accepted to Egypt’s oldest university and has been granted a scholarship for Islamic studies.
However, Adam won’t even settle in the student dormitory, which looks more like a JNA dormitory, and the old imam/sheikh, whatever, will die during his first address to the new students. The choice of a new religious leader will turn into a real political issue, and the Egyptian secret services, which have had their spies at the university before, will interfere in the choice. The most popular imam, whom everyone sees as the successor of the deceased sheikh, is not really to the president’s liking, and he has a different choice, and this is where Adam will enter the scene, who will be hired as an informant at the university by Colonel Ibrahim (Swedish actor of Lebanese origin Fares Fares from “The Nile Hilton Incident ” and the Danish series about Department Q).
And it’s not that Adam will have much choice whether he wants the job or not, but in front of his eyes someone will cut down the student who previously had that task. Now the colonel will demand the same from Adam, who will soon realize that he has entered into a dangerous game in which he himself could do very badly. Saleh was also the screenwriter of this film, which in its structure and style is reminiscent of spy films shot according to John Le Carre’s literary templates, and although he was born in Sweden, where he has lived all his life, he obviously knows very well how things work in Egypt. It is a masterfully executed thriller that is also a fierce social critique of a system riddled with corruption and hypocrisy and a system that is still authoritarian at its core.