Tarik Saleh’s biting satire follows a renowned actor who is pressured by the Egyptian government to star in a blockbuster that glorifies the president.
At the beginning of *Eagles of the Republic*, the protagonist—George Fahmy (Fares Fares), a (fictional) superstar of the Egyptian film industry so popular and profitable that others bestow upon him (with a hint of mockery) the title of "Pharaoh of the Screen"—overhears an actor, whom he despises for having recently starred in a government-backed propaganda film, say: "I see no contradiction whatsoever between being an artist and being a patriot." That is a thorny proposition that every actor with a certain level of success must confront, for the line between the most vibrant Hollywood-style entertainment and glorifying nationalist propaganda proves to be exceedingly thin.
Director: Tarik Saleh
Writers: Tarik Saleh, Magdi Abdelhadi
Stars: Fares Fares, Lyna Khoudri, Amr Waked
But if there is one genuine moral value that Fahmy—who is, by all other accounts, unfaithful, dishonest, and generally a self-centered jerk more concerned with his own comfort than with politics—truly cherishes, it is his integrity as an actor and his conviction that the work he produces possesses true artistic merit. Consequently, he scoffs at an offer to star in a government-commissioned film glorifying the rise to power of Egypt’s current dictator, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi—at least until one night, when he is accosted in his car by government agents who threaten to make his teenage son disappear. From that moment on, the film morphs into a sort of political thriller, though it is at its most compelling when it pauses to question whether it is possible—or even permissible—to create great art under the yoke of totalitarian control.
Directed by Swedish-Egyptian filmmaker Tarik Saleh, *Eagles of the Republic* serves as the concluding installment of his informal "Cairo" trilogy, which began with *The Nile Hilton Incident* (2017) and continued with *Boy From Heaven* (2022). Much like those two films, *Eagles of the Republic* is a thriller set in Cairo but produced outside of Egypt, featuring Fares in the starring role. Each of his films contains an incisive critique of Egyptian society and the government; however, *Eagles of the Republic* balances this criticism with a clear nostalgia for the country and a deep affection for its cinematic tradition—an affection evident even in an opening title sequence that pays homage to Egyptian movie posters of the 1950s and 1960s: hand-drawn illustrations that are vibrantly colored and deeply emotive.
Set (loosely) in the year 2015, the film unfolds at a leisurely pace over its two-hour runtime, striving to immerse the audience in Fahmy’s world and populate it with memorable supporting characters—ranging from his much younger, tormented girlfriend to his gay agent. Nevertheless, the tension between Fahmy’s devotion to his craft and the life-or-death consequences of the situation he has been forced into infuses the film’s—at times somewhat languid—pacing with a certain intensity. The film becomes explosive whenever it shifts to the set to explore the production process of the project—a work that one of the producers likens to Cecil B. DeMille’s *The Ten Commandments*—serving to illustrate the sheer scale—and the almost religious veneration of El-Sisi—upon which this monstrous blockbuster operates.
Tormented by threats directed at his son—an indifferent, embarrassed teenager whom Fahmy nonetheless adores unconditionally—the director reluctantly agrees to make the film, determined to find a way to tell a captivating story while still adhering to the mandates imposed by the State. The task proves to be far more arduous than expected, as the government bureaucrats charged with overseeing the filming manipulate the facts and demand script rewrites in order to glorify the regime.
The film explores this conflict from multiple perspectives, depicting a Fahmy who struggles to come to terms with the fact that he has been turned—against his will—into a symbol in the service of the president. He is forbidden from using the bald cap and makeup he had planned to wear to better resemble the president, the aim being to ensure that his own image is, instead, canonized and equated with that of El-Sisi. In a scene shared with other actors playing Sisi’s fellow military officers, Fahmy desperately attempts to persuade them to perform their roles with a less reverent attitude toward the president’s character.
Towards its final third, *Eagles of the Republic* begins to lose momentum—particularly when it introduces a pivotal character in the figure of Suzanne (played by Zineb Triki): the outspoken wife of a government minister who oversees the film production, and with whom Fahmy falls in love. While Suzanne’s motivations are intentionally murky and remain unknown to Fahmy, the character proves regrettably underdeveloped given the significance she assumes in the film’s climax; indeed, the romance between the two ultimately emerges as an unconvincing blemish on the movie’s final resolution.
Broadly speaking, the female characters in *Eagles of the Republic* tend to be superficial; Lyna Khoudri, for instance, is relegated to a rather insubstantial role: that of Fahmy’s long-suffering younger girlfriend, plagued by issues involving her father. This may have been a deliberate choice—given that we perceive this woman through the prism of Fahmy’s casual sexism—yet both women ultimately come across more as symbols than as flesh-and-blood human beings.
Just when it seems that *Eagles of the Republic* is beginning to falter, Saleh fortunately manages to nail the film’s conclusion thanks to a genuinely surprising plot twist in the third act—one that ratchets up the tension and allows Fares to embody Fahmy’s desperation with unbridled intensity. What makes *Eagles of the Republic* so fascinating is how, even as its final act departs from the cinematic milieu to embrace the more conventional tropes of the political thriller, the film manages to keep the action intrinsically tethered to the struggles Fahmy faces in his dual capacity as both an actor and a political spokesperson. Towards the end, the protagonist succinctly encapsulates the dilemma of his profession: "We speak words that are not our own, and we experience feelings that do not belong to us either."
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