Tarik Saleh is the Swedish-Egyptian director who made The Nile Hilton Incident in 2017, a shrewd, dyspeptic film concerning the official corruption in Egypt that triggered the Tahrir Sq. rebellion. Now in an period when the Arab spring has arguably develop into a bittersweet reminiscence, he has delivered to the Cannes competitors this watchable conspiracy espionage-drama satirising the corruption of church and state. There’s an intriguing mixture of scorn and paranoia right here, along with a craving for particular person figures of decency midway down the meals chain – it jogged my memory of John le Carré.
Adam (Tawfeek Barhom) is a fisherman’s son within the northern city of Manzala who's overjoyed to obtain information from his native imam that he's getting a lavish state sponsorship to check Islamic thought at Cairo’s internationally prestigious Al-Azhar College. This can be a dizzying honour. As soon as on the college, he's overawed by the self-discipline, the rigour and the ambiance of piety however disconcerted additionally when a fellow pupil presents him a cigarette – of all of the louche issues – and invitations him out for a secular night time in town. Their seat of studying is shocked when its ageing chief imam drops useless of a coronary heart assault whereas addressing the coed physique, and immediately there may be political jockeying from the opposite imams as to who's take over a place of monumental political affect.
Adam’s personal bewilderment and misery is compounded when he witnesses his new pupil pal being murdered by masked assailants, and shortly he's contacted by a dishevelled and cynical intelligence agent, Colonel Ibrahim (performed by Fares Fares, the cop in The Nile Hilton Incident) who makes one thing horribly clear. Adam’s useless pal was an informant being “run” by the state safety equipment, covertly reporting again to the federal government on the imams’ subversive political beliefs.
This useless younger man, like Adam himself, was the recipient of a state scholarship given to obedient provincials who will take orders from their actual masters. Now Adam should work as a spy to make sure that the federal government’s favoured candidate will get the highest job and if issues go flawed there isn't a assure Adam gained’t wind up like his good friend. Saleh creates very tense scenes during which Adam has to additional infiltrate varied cliques and in-crowds on the college, get their belief and assuage their suspicions by conniving in violent acts towards their enemies – and all this in a seat of non secular studying.
It’s a film that's boldly anti-clerical, juxtaposing the spectacle of religion with a hidden actuality of corruption and hypocrisy – though within the closing act I sensed that it maybe didn't fairly have the braveness of its satirical convictions. The spiritual authorities in Egypt could also be mollified by this movie’s closing implication that the secular state is marginally extra institutionally corrupt than the spiritual institution. It’s a daring piece of labor nonetheless.
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