Eagles of the Republic: an ‘electrifying’ Cairo-set thriller

Although it is “convincingly set” in Cairo, there is a reason why “Eagles of the Republic” was filmed in Istanbul, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times. “Tarik Saleh’s acid comic thriller is wrapped around a j’accuse aimed at Egypt’s military dictator, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.”

Lebanese-Swedish actor Fares Fares plays a fictional Egyptian movie star, George Fahmy, who is no hero off-camera: initially, the film has some fun with this vain, “pampered matinee idol in the thick of middle age”. However, Fahmy discovers the limits of his star power when he is asked to play Sisi in a hagiographic biopic: he is not sure that he and the president look alike (they do not) but it becomes clear that this is not a role he can turn down. On set, his performance is supervised by “a chilling presidential aide” (Amr Waked), and the sardonic comedy of the early scenes “is slowly swallowed by the dark currents of life in a dictatorship – the ghouls and goons that man the system, their violence and terror”.