On Tuesday at the Palm Springs International Film Festival is Eagle of the Republic, a political thriller from Egypt from Tarik Saleh, the well-known Swedish-Egyptian director. As the latest in his Cairo Trilogy, Eagle of the Republic addresses the pernicious co-option and corruption under the regime of Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, who has been in power since deposing the democratically elected Mohamed Morsi in a 2013 coup d’état. This film is actually Sweden’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the 2026 Academy Awards. It screen on Tuesday at 7:00 PM at Palm Springs High School and again on Wednesday, January 6, at 10:00 AM, at the Palm Springs Cultural Center.
Actor George Fahmy (played by Swedish-Egyptian actor Fares Fares), known for his fame as the “Pharoh of the Screen,” is asked to play the role of Al-Sisi in a patriotic propaganda piece called Will of the People. Fahmy balks at the tackiness of the proposed film, but soon realizes he has no choice but to accept. That means he must take notes from the government’s on-set observer and de facto producer Dr. Manssour (Amr Waked).
George Fahmy has a public image of being a happy family man, but is reality is secretly separated from his wife and dating the much younger Donya (Lyna Khoudri). When he decides to say “yes” to the movie project, Fahmy realizes that some perks will come from his proximity to the regime. These include having a few strings pulled as personal favors and the opportunity to begin a torrid affair with Suzanne (Zineb Triki), the beautiful and cultured wife of the Defense Minister. Little does Fahmy realize that he has been drawn into a shadowy world full of dangers – are more dangerous than anything being filmed.
The character of actor George Fahmy (played by Fares Fares) is clearly accustomed to his fame and the benefits it bestows. Demonstrating the.same ruthlessly sharp eye for Cairo’s power dynamics that distinguished the previous instalments in the Tarik Saleh’s award-winning trilogy of films set in the city – The Nile Hilton Incident (2017), and Cairo Conspiracy (2022) – Saleh draws in viewers with tantalizing images of wealth, glamour, and privilege before revealing the more brutal reality existing behind the façade.
Throughout the film, we follow George’s rise and fall as he gets caught up in a government conspiracy and slowly loses control over his meticulous image and social control. Rather, things just sort of happen to George. he seems less like a man of authority and more of a spectre, who seemingly floats from scene to scene.
From the beginning, his relationships with his son, ex-wife, friends, and girlfriend are apathetic and a side note to his life. While it, like many of the narrative choices, makes sense in theory, these relationships never change or meaningfully impact the course of his character. The film is meant to be a political satire, but the character of George Fahmy is a rather weak individual who probably seems too naïve about the political machinations that surround him. He is not in charge of his own fate. While a good bit of technical filmmaking does showcase the aesthetic struggles that match the gritty, political satire it wants to portray. But the third act twist runs counter to the general direction of the plot, forgoing the pacing of the rest of the film and launches the audience into a sudden assault.
There is room for much dark humor here, yet most of the story is deadly serious and even quite frightening, given the rapidly changing world order that makes almost anything seem possible from state surveillance of the creative process and media control to a violent coup. The film has a bold, stripped-down look in places and a retro feel in others that can be interpreted as weirdly campy, but it is hard to look away from the well-developed storyline as it circles around corrupt ministers, overt spies and honey traps, without counting a major plot twist three-quarters through the film.
Given the delicate balance filmmakers have to strike in Egypt to get financing and avoid censorship, the question arises how Saleh managed to shoot such a script in the first place. The answer is he is a Swedish director of Egyptian origin, backed by Swedish production companies linked to France’s Memento and Germany’s Films Boutique. The film was shot in Istanbul with Swedish and French actors and produced on a hefty budget of €9 million. Outside of France and Scandinavia, it could find interest among adventurous viewers.
As can be seen in the first two films of the trilogy, the filmmakers get a lot right about the atmosphere of Cairo’s political, military and religious elites. The Nile Hilton Incident from 2017 is set during Egypt’s freedom revolution and the collapse of the Mubarek regime. Fares appears in the main role as a detective. Walad Min Al Janna (aka Cairo Conspiracy and Boy from Heaven), released in 2022, is highly critical of the religious establishment, uncovering corruption hidden among the faithful. In this one Fares plays a state security agent spying on a famous mosque. The film won best screenplay at Cannes. Yes, it was actually filmed in Turkey.
In Eagles, Fares Fares (the actor) seems every inch as much a star as George Fahmy, whose striking face and mellow cool has earned him enormous popularity. His personal life is a colorful mess: He has divorced Rula Haddad (Cherien Dabis), an actress who is the mother of his teenage son, and is living with a rising star half his age, played with calculated glamour by a woman named Donya (Lyna Khourdi). They both seem aware their relationship is not fated to last, and when George meets the alluring intellectual sophisticate Suzanne (Zineb Triki), he doesn’t hesitate to flirt. This, in spite of the fact she is the wife of an army general, the Minister of Defense. Things get complicated quickly.
It’s a tough career moment, too, when George finds his personal trailer removed from the studio lot. As his agent explains, he has received an offer he can’t afford to refuse: to play the current president in a fawning biopic, even though George is tall, handsome, and has a full head of hair and so bears zero resemblance to Al-Sisi. Additionally, humiliating is the presence of the president’s right-hand man on the set, Dr. Mansour (Amr Waked), whose role extends to rewriting scenes he doesn’t like and demanding fresh takes.
Fares brings not only true professionalism but measured reactions that keep him sympathetic no matter how many compromises he is forced to make on the farcical movie. Driving around town in his beat-up old car is a sign of defiance, showing that beneath the movie star veneer lies a real person. Even in the key scene at a military academy, where George is scheduled to give an adulatory address in the presence of the president and his chiefs of staff, and where all hell breaks loose, he is never trite or predictable. From this moment on the story changes register and coasts to a startling but realistic finale.
