Director: Tarik Saleh (Sweden, France, Finland, Denmark). Year of Release: 2022
A boat in the middle of the ocean. An older and younger man are fishing. As they bring their haul on shore, their extended family help take their catch home. Adam seems to be destined to live in a small fishing village all his life, but fate intervenes with an invitation to study at the prestigious Al-Azhar Islamic University in Cairo. His father is reluctant to let Adam go, but tells his son that his destiny is the will of Allah, and even a father cannot intervene.
The University students are addressed by the Grand Imam. Half-way through his speech, the Imam stutters then falls to the ground, coughing up blood. He doesn’t survive, and there is suddenly a political race to find his successor. A State bureaucrat (whose office wall is adorned with a photo of President el-Sisi and a signed short from Mo Salah) orders his minions to ensure that the right person wins the election for Imam, at the expense of the Muslim Brotherhood candidate.
Enter Ibrahim, who seems to be a freelance agent of the state, in charge of recruiting informers. He has an unkempt beard and his casual jacket contrasts with the proper dress worn within the University and the mosque. Ibrahim’s most recent informer has recently been compromised, and is hacked to death on Campus. Ibrahim is looking for new eyes and ears on the ground. And, as it happens, the informer was one of the few friends made by the introverted Adam.
At best Ibrahim is looking for people who are slightly naive and unconnected to the political intrigue in the Big City. Like someone from a fishing village? It is almost as if the scholarships being offered to rural kids were being organised by a State which was keen to police its radical students. Ibrahim takes Adam under his wing, promising him that cooperation will help his father gain a necessary operation. Also, if Adam plays ball, his family’s boats won’t meet a nasty accident.
Ibrahim urges Adam to infiltrate the Brotherhood and report back on their activities. The audience thus encounters political discussion, but at an arm’s length. I have little knowledge of the director Tarik Saleh, but in this film, his political attitude seems to be one of utter cynicism. Politicians? Can’t trust them. Religious leaders? Mainly hypocrites. Anyone trying to rectify the situation? Either radical extremists or naive do-gooders.
It is not always easy to tell what Die Kairo Verschwörung is trying to do. Is it a murder mystery, a political thriller, a spy film or a search through the depths of the soul? While it adopts tropes (one might even say clichés) from each of these genres, I was never really sure what it was trying to do with them. We were being told a story with deep political and personal implications for its protagonists, but did any of it really mean anything important?
The film is viewed through the eyes of Adam, the inexperienced fisherman’s son, which somehow reduces the ability to make wider social comment. What happens is seen in terms of how it affects Adam, rather than its implications for society as a whole. So, while we witness the terrible behaviour of an authoritarian state and an oppressive society, it is all somehow distant, something which happens to Adam, not Egyptians as a whole. Other opinions are, of course, also valid.
There is a gotcha moment towards the end of the film. To avoid plot spoilers, I’m going to have to dance around this, but let’s just say that Adam remains socially isolated, to the extent that the only way in which he can show his disgust at the political system is to try to ask awkward questions and public events. Except, as no-one knows about what is embarrassing, no-one is really shamed. I’m convinced that the main point of this scene is to make the audience feel superior to the characters.
This focus on the individual stretches the credibility of the plot. The security forces are intent on manipulating an important election and spying on potential opposition, but they only allow themselves one informant at a time? This comes partly from a belief that it is individuals who change society, not social forces. Morality is reduced to individual decisions taken by people like Adam (or Ibrahim) and not on oppositionalists uniting to enforce change.
This makes Die Kairo Verschwörung a film which is both intriguing and frustrating. There are few more interesting societies this century than an Egypt which has experienced revolution, counter-revolution and brutal repression. This film carries little sense of this experience. I’m not sure whether this is because director Tarik Saleh has lived many years in exile, or maybe he, like many of his contemporaries, has had hope beaten out of him, but there is a real lack of dynamic.
There is also the slight matter of the almost complete absence of female faces from the film. In at least one case, this is character forming – Adam seems to be defined by the early death of his mother. Yes, patriarchal societies do their best to deny women a voice, and on one level, the lack of women on screen is a reflection of a female presence in some section of Sisi’s Egypt. And yet it is almost as if the film is colluding with the silencing of women.
My main problem with the film is that nothing really happens, and it happens very slowly. For all the aspirations towards being an espionage film, it is very difficult to care much about what happens to whom. There is little suspense, and – notwithstanding some impressive scenery – not much to keep our eyes glued to the screen. We move from one scene to the next, and then it’s all over. By the end, I never really had the feeling that I’d experienced much.
CinePhil 