The multicultural filmmaker Tarik Saleh has one foot planted in his heritage country Egypt, and the other in Sweden, the place he calls his home. In his director's statement about his latest work, Cairo Conspiracy, Saleh writes: "As an artist, I see my job to be truthful in my work, no matter the consequences. I am in this unique place that has doors to several worlds. I could open a door and sit with my uncle in Egypt and talk about what God thinks of masturbation, then step into another room to see my grandmother jump into a lake in the Swedish archipelago, naked. The most interesting thing to me is not to see how mis-informed people are about other cultures, but how totally self-deceptive we are about our own. I see the similarities rather than the differences."
The film world premiered on the Croisette in May of last year, to critical acclaim. It was then called Boy from Heaven but the new title suits the events depicted in the film, just as well as the original title brought attention to the film's leading character -- Adam, played by the charismatic and beautifully puzzling Tawfeek Barhom.
In Cairo Conspiracy, we watch Adam, the son of a fisherman in the Egyptian delta as he is offered the ultimate privilege to study at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the epicenter of power of Sunni Islam. When the university's highest ranking religious leader, the Grand Imam, suddenly dies, Adam soon becomes a pawn in the ruthless power struggle that ensues, causing a push and pull effect, with tragic results, between Egypt’s religious and political elite.
The film is Sweden's submissions to the Oscar race this year, and Cairo Conspiracy is currently longlisted in the Best International Feature Film category.
Tarik Saleh is best known for The Nile Hilton Incident which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2017, received a Guldbagge Award for Best Film in 2018, was nominated as Best Foreign Film at the César Awards and was a box office hit -- with more than 400 000 tickets sold in France. He also directed the Hollywood film The Contractor (2022), several episodes of the futuristic HBO-series Westworld (2018) and Tommy (2014) with Ola Rapace, Moa Gammel and singer-songwriter Lykke Li.
Samuel Goldwyn Films is releasing Cairo Conspiracy in the U.S. starting on January 27th in NYC, at the IFC Center, in Los Angeles, at the Laemmle Glendale and in San Francisco at the Rafael Film Center, with a rollout in more cities to follow.
