Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: a gripping, award-winning thriller at Cannes.
Five years after the success of the feature film Cairo Confidential, Tarik Saleh is back with a thrilling and hard-hitting thriller set in the heart of the Egyptian capital. Its title? The Cairo Conspiracy.
Want another TV tip for tonight? We recommend this pure family comedy with Benoît Poelvoorde and Dany Boon!
Released in cinemas in 2022, this gripping feature film, lasting 120 minutes, follows the story of a student trapped in a political-religious power struggle within his Al-Azhar University. Following the death of the leader of Sunni Islam, he suddenly finds himself hired by the Egyptian secret services with the aim of spying on his comrades.
In the title role, we find Tawfeek Barhom (who recently played in the thriller Les Fantômes by Jonathan Millet), but also Fares Fares (who is none other than the protagonist of Cairo Confidential).
A gripping and thrilling thriller
And The Cairo Conspiracy didn't really have the expected effect at the national box office (with only 520,936 spectators in theaters), it enjoyed great success at festivals.
It was notably nominated for a César in the “Best Foreign Film” category, at the Lumières de la presse française as “Best International Co-production”, but above all, it received the Screenplay Prize at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. A noble reward for the director who has already proven himself with Cairo Confidential.
Today, The Cairo Conspiracy is considered by many to be a fabulous political and spiritual thriller. The proof is the rating given to it by AlloCiné internet users: 3.9 out of 5. On the press side, journalists awarded it the honorable average of 3.8 out of 5, including five stars from L'Humanité, LCI , Le Parisien, Marianne and Ouest France.
Yet nothing was won in advance for Tarik Saleh. And for the filmmaker, he was forced to shoot his feature film in Turkey, because he is banned from entering Egypt (since his film released in 2015, he has been on the undesirable list of the country's security services).
“To represent Al-Azhar, we were able to shoot in the Süleymanye Mosque in Istanbul, a magnificent building built in the 16th century, whose master builder, Sinan, trained the architect of the Blue Mosque”explains the director. A delicate project, therefore.
Tonight on Arte at 9:00 p.m.
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