DIRECTOR: Tarik Saleh
STARRING: Fares Fares, Lyna Khoudri, Amr Waked, Zineb Triki, Cherien Dabis
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 9 minutes
LANGUAGE: Arabic, French
PLOT: Egypt’s most beloved actor, George Fahmy, is coerced into starring in a film commissioned by the country’s highest authorities. Reluctantly stepping into the role, he is pulled deep into the corridors of power, where art, politics, and desire dangerously intertwine. Like a moth to a flame, Fahmy becomes entangled in a forbidden affair with the enigmatic wife of the general overseeing the production.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Istanbul, Turkey
To check out all previous submissions for Sweden, click HERE.
STARRING: Fares Fares, Lyna Khoudri, Amr Waked, Zineb Triki, Cherien Dabis
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 9 minutes
LANGUAGE: Arabic, French
PLOT: Egypt’s most beloved actor, George Fahmy, is coerced into starring in a film commissioned by the country’s highest authorities. Reluctantly stepping into the role, he is pulled deep into the corridors of power, where art, politics, and desire dangerously intertwine. Like a moth to a flame, Fahmy becomes entangled in a forbidden affair with the enigmatic wife of the general overseeing the production.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Istanbul, Turkey
To check out all previous submissions for Sweden, click HERE.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“We say words that have been written for us and experience feelings that have been dictated to us."
Eagles of the Republic, the latest political thriller from Egyptian-Swedish director Tarik Saleh, unfolds as a seductive blend of satire, noir, and tragedy. Set in the labyrinth of Cairo’s film and political industries, the story follows George Fahmy, Egypt’s most celebrated actor, who is coerced into starring in a government-commissioned production meant to glorify the regime. What begins as a reluctant artistic compromise quickly spirals into a tense moral odyssey. Saleh once again constructs a world where corruption seeps through every layer of society, and where truth becomes another commodity traded for power.
Cinematically, the film is a feast of contradictions: opulent yet suffocating, glamorous yet decaying. The camera glides through smoke-filled studios and lavish government halls with a sense of unease, framing Egypt not as a nation of grandeur but as a theater of manipulation. Saleh’s direction thrives on tension, between performance and authenticity, love and loyalty, submission and revolt. The screenplay moves with precision, revealing how even the brightest star can be consumed by a system that turns art into propaganda. Every frame feels deliberate, evoking the paranoia and elegance of 1970s political cinema while maintaining a distinctly modern urgency.
As Fahmy becomes entangled in a dangerous affair with the general’s mysterious wife, the film shifts from political satire to moral thriller. Their relationship, equal parts passion and peril, mirrors the allure of complicity itself: intoxicating, destructive, impossible to escape. Saleh refuses to paint his characters as heroes or villains; instead, he exposes how each one becomes an actor in the grand performance of state power. The boundaries between cinema and politics blur until the film-within-the-film becomes indistinguishable from reality, a haunting metaphor for how regimes rewrite narratives to sustain control.
Eagles of the Republic is a reflection on the seduction of power and the fragility of conscience. It asks what happens when art, created to illuminate truth, becomes a tool of deception and self-preservation. George Fahmy’s descent is not just personal, it mirrors the disillusionment of a generation of artists caught between integrity and survival, between speaking truth and maintaining privilege. Saleh crafts this moral collapse with chilling precision, showing how even the most principled individuals can be seduced by proximity to authority, by the illusion of control. Beneath the glamour, the film becomes a lament for a nation’s creative soul, where cinema, once a space of imagination and resistance, has been conscripted into the machinery of propaganda. Eagles of the Republic stands as a bold and deeply resonant meditation on complicity, reminding us that in a world where every truth is staged, the act of resistance begins with refusing to perform.
(This review contains spoilers.)
“We say words that have been written for us and experience feelings that have been dictated to us."
Eagles of the Republic, the latest political thriller from Egyptian-Swedish director Tarik Saleh, unfolds as a seductive blend of satire, noir, and tragedy. Set in the labyrinth of Cairo’s film and political industries, the story follows George Fahmy, Egypt’s most celebrated actor, who is coerced into starring in a government-commissioned production meant to glorify the regime. What begins as a reluctant artistic compromise quickly spirals into a tense moral odyssey. Saleh once again constructs a world where corruption seeps through every layer of society, and where truth becomes another commodity traded for power.
Cinematically, the film is a feast of contradictions: opulent yet suffocating, glamorous yet decaying. The camera glides through smoke-filled studios and lavish government halls with a sense of unease, framing Egypt not as a nation of grandeur but as a theater of manipulation. Saleh’s direction thrives on tension, between performance and authenticity, love and loyalty, submission and revolt. The screenplay moves with precision, revealing how even the brightest star can be consumed by a system that turns art into propaganda. Every frame feels deliberate, evoking the paranoia and elegance of 1970s political cinema while maintaining a distinctly modern urgency.
As Fahmy becomes entangled in a dangerous affair with the general’s mysterious wife, the film shifts from political satire to moral thriller. Their relationship, equal parts passion and peril, mirrors the allure of complicity itself: intoxicating, destructive, impossible to escape. Saleh refuses to paint his characters as heroes or villains; instead, he exposes how each one becomes an actor in the grand performance of state power. The boundaries between cinema and politics blur until the film-within-the-film becomes indistinguishable from reality, a haunting metaphor for how regimes rewrite narratives to sustain control.
Eagles of the Republic is a reflection on the seduction of power and the fragility of conscience. It asks what happens when art, created to illuminate truth, becomes a tool of deception and self-preservation. George Fahmy’s descent is not just personal, it mirrors the disillusionment of a generation of artists caught between integrity and survival, between speaking truth and maintaining privilege. Saleh crafts this moral collapse with chilling precision, showing how even the most principled individuals can be seduced by proximity to authority, by the illusion of control. Beneath the glamour, the film becomes a lament for a nation’s creative soul, where cinema, once a space of imagination and resistance, has been conscripted into the machinery of propaganda. Eagles of the Republic stands as a bold and deeply resonant meditation on complicity, reminding us that in a world where every truth is staged, the act of resistance begins with refusing to perform.
