Cairo Conspiracy (Tarik Saleh, 2022) (Patreon)

When Tarik Saleh's Cairo Conspiracy (or Boy From Heaven, as it was called at the time) was announced as a selection for the 2022 Cannes competition slate, there was a bit of confusion. Wait, isn't that the same guy who directed some random Chris Pine actioner? Indeed, Saleh's other 2022 release, The Contractor, was the sort of routine Hollywood junk studiously ignored by critics and, to a large extent, by audiences. But having now seen Cairo Conspiracy, it makes a bit more sense. Apart from the Egyptian context, this is a beat-by-beat B-level political thriller, although it's quite evident that Saleh thinks it's a bit more than that. (So too did the Cannes Jury, who inexplicably gave this the screenplay award.)

Ordinarily I would damn a film like this with the faint praise of calling it competent. And while it is not exactly shoddy, it does have a bizarre lack of structural integrity. Assembled as if the editor were being held hostage, Cairo Conspiracy plays like a limited series that, when the money ran out, was cut to the bone for two-hour theatrical release. It's not just that it hurtles from event to event with no concern for things like atmosphere or character development. At times the film sacrifices basic plausibility for... what? Expediency? "Excitement"? Saleh sets up a domino in one scene and proceeds to knock it down in the next, with no build, no suspense. It's like he got approval based on a treatment and never bothered to write a proper script.

Since this film is little more than a collection of incidents, I may as well describe some of them, to provide some context for the thing. Adam (Tawfeek Barhom) is a fisherman's son in a coastal Egyptian village. He's also a budding Islamic scholar and, with the help of his local imam (Hassan El-Sayed), gains admission to the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The preeminent institution for Sunni Muslim education, Al-Azhar turns out to be a political hotbed of competing ideologies, and although the school has relative autonomy from the Mubarak regime, various moles and State Security informants work to steer the school in the necessary direction. (I lost count of how many scenes prominently feature a framed photo of Mubarak, giving steely tyrant-glare.)

Adam gets pulled into the intrigue almost by accident, and Ibraham (Fares Fares), a grizzled State Security officer from Central Casting's Cairo office, forces him to be his eyes and ears. In quick succession, Adam dispatches a secret study group that's connected with the Muslim Brotherhood; sidelines a hardliner imam (Ramzi Choukair) by exposing his illegitimate child; and sidles up to the regime's preferred candidate for Grand Imam (Jalal Altawil) to insure he gets voted in by the university's...steering committee? Conclave? Sorry, I'm not sure what the proper nomenclature would be. Oh, and there's another imam (Makram J. Khoury), simply called The Blind Sheikh, whose candidacy must also be sandbagged. It's exhausting.

There are some interesting aspects of Cairo Conspiracy despite itself. This has mostly to do with the setting, since I knew nothing about Al-Azhar University, and Saleh's depiction of open-air seminars on the Quran -- with various imams trying to out-teach one another in the courtyard -- was rather fascinating. Whether this has any basis in reality I do not know, but it was sort of cool, like a sort of Sunni rap battle. (As inapposite as this comparison may seem, it's worth emphasizing that Adam's televised public shaming of Sheikh Al-Durani, the Big Mac-loving imam with the secret child, was only slightly more restrained that Pusha T's diss-track exposure of Drake.)

It should be said, every national cinema has a right to its cheesy potboilers. But why Cannes? Given that the last Egyptian film chosen for competition was the mawkish Yomeddine, it seems like another case of Thierry Fremaux's wretched taste. We've fallen off considerably from the days of Youssef Chahine, whose films were at least ambitious even when they failed to hit the mark. But the most irritating thing about Cairo Conspiracy, apart from its fast-forward pacing, is the fact that Saleh suggests that there is something serious at stake here. Seemingly set shortly before the Tahrir Square demonstrations and resignation of Mubarak, the film contrasts the deposed president's thuggery with the Muslim Brotherhood's Qutb-inspired jihadism, placing Egyptian society between a rock and a hard place. There seems like there might be a third option, represented by Adam's roommate Raed (Ahmed Lassaoui), a devout Muslim who also likes to go to raves in the city center. But Cairo Conspiracy would rather revel in cynicism, making sure we know that everyone has been corrupted from the very start.