Cairo Conspiracy

Pamela Jahn in conversation with Tarik Saleh.

The Swedish-Egyptian filmmaker discusses the politics behind his spy thriller Cairo Conspiracy

In your film, you don't reveal the time the story is set in. Why?

In my mind, I dated it, but it’s complicated. Firstly, because it’s a fiction film. I really want to stress that, and I don't say this for my own safety. The only real character in the story is President El-Sisi, and he only appears in form of images. I thought of Al-Azhar in the early 1960s, but placing it in contemporary Egypt, after El-Sisi came to power, but obviously before the pandemic. I wanted it to feel timeless because the struggle between the priest and the pharaoh is very old in Egypt. It’s always been there. For me, the timing of the story could have been any time during the last 6,000 years in Egypt, but it would have been too expensive to shoot a period drama.

You mentioned your safety, are you genuinely not concerned?

Maybe it’s famous last words, but I’m not worried. I hate it when filmmakers pretend that they have courage. I have a Swedish passport. I don't have courage. If you are a woman in Iran and you burn your hijab in a square, that’s courageous to me. You have nowhere to go. Or my Egyptian friends, who speak the truth in the home country, they go to jail and get tortured, and when they get out, they continue to tell the truth. That’s courage in Saudi Arabia. Of course, there's a military dictatorship in Egypt, it is like Chile after the coup. But we don’t look at it that way because you can still choose between Starbucks and Costa Coffee, and you can still go to an IMAX and see the latest Marvel installation. But if you complain that the road is broken, someone will come knock on your door at night, and no one dares to ask where you disappeared to. That is the reality of today’s Egypt. And it’s my duty to use the freedom that I have to show these things. It would be ridiculous not to.

Do you consider yourself to be a political filmmaker?

No, I am not into political films in that sense because I was wrong about politics so many times in the past. I said no, Sweden shouldn’t join the EU but, of course, we joined the EU, and I think it was good. Then, I said we should join the Euro because I thought the Swedish krona would be worthless - but no, we didn’t join the Euro and the krona is stable. I was even like, 'Facebook, who wants Facebook?' Okay, apparently the whole world wanted Facebook. So, don’t take my advice on anything, I'm most likely wrong.

Still, your film is a highly political thriller. It is a story about how two kinds of politics, the state and secret police, clashing with each other.

Yes, true, and I’m very interested in politics, but I’m also interested in more universal themes of authority and power. And of course, it’s political to investigate how authority works and how power is executed, but there is no political statement in the film.

How did you approach the subject matter for yourself?

The question for me always is: What can we learn? I mean, how many people will have known about Al-Azhar when they walk into that cinema? Islam is in the news every day, it's like the boogieman, the monster hiding under your bed, Islam is dangerous. But most people don’t know that the Grand Imam exists or who he is. Now, ask yourself, do you think Egyptians know about the Pope and the Vatican? They do. They know the difference between a Protestant and a Catholic. They know the EU, they know NATO. Still, you are the enlightened people, and I find that interesting. Of course, there are things in Egypt that people don’t know, and they are being told false tales, for example, that the West is waging war against Islam. But if you don't know truth, that’s very dangerous, because that's how wars start. So, whose responsibility is that? And to some extent, I feel it’s mine. But I'm not a teacher, this is not a documentary film. You will know as much as the characters know.

What, for you personally, was the most controversial aspect of the film?

It’s an interesting question the way you put it, because the most controversial aspect of the film is the portrayal of state security. But that is not the most controversial thing for me personally. As a rational guy, who wants explanations for everything, the most controversial thing is whether God exists or not, whether God is present or not. And to be honest, I can’t answer that question fully yet. In some early versions of the script, there were elements of magic and magic realism in it. And I took it out because I felt that I was hiding behind something. I even had an atheist in the story, and I was hiding behind that character, too. When I removed all that, what was left was something that was sort of staring back at me, something I cannot quite grasp yet, but that's a very personal answer to your question.

You also chose to have very few female characters in the film.

We all know, and the men in the film know, that when there are no women, it becomes horrible, it becomes a very toxic and terrible environment. I mean, you can visit any prison, the Army, whatever, it becomes something scary, at least for me. So, it was a way of isolating Adam, the main character, on a very sort of basic emotional level.

But there is also a personal connection, I believe?

Yes, my grandparents came from fishing villages in the Nile Delta and they both got their educations in the 1930s in Egypt. And to make that step was a huge decision, especially for my grandmother. She received the certificate to be able to work from the king. And then they were sent to a village to educate fisherman's children. It's the fishing village that I describe in the film, where my father was born. But there was also something else that was important to me from a story point of view: In Egyptian culture, the father is a punisher, and the mother is nourishing - the roles are very clear. But when the mother dies, of course, the dynamic within the family changes. Therefore, for me, it was important that Adam had lost the one person that would nourish him and inspire him to actually learn and educate himself. His mother was dead, which meant that he was afraid of death, even though he’s a believer, he was afraid of death because he felt the pain of losing someone.

You said in a different interview that you are a filmmaker who wants to tell stories truthfully. To what extent would you go to do so?

I have a background in documentary filmmaking and journalism. And back then, I was under the impression that we were working with the truth. What I found astonishing when I started working in fiction was that it’s kind of the opposite. As a journalist, most of the time you ask yourself, what’s the story here? You try to find the story within a given reality. Whereas when you tell a fictional story, you are saying what is true here? So, in a way, reality and truth are very subjective in fiction. I think there is an emotional truth. And it's almost a matter of method, it's even more, it's a mission.

What is your method then in that sense? I use a very simple method when I direct, I say, 'I don’t believe what I see.' And then the actors look at me, and I have to explain to them why I don’t believe it, what is it in this situation that I don’t believe? In a sort of more direct and vulgar way, I sometimes compare directing to when I was a kid, because I was always the game master. And now, as a grownup, I am the same. The difference is that I get to play with some amazing actors. And when I work with someone like Fares Fares, who is also very close to me, that's wonderful, because he’s incapable of lying. That’s what is so great about him, and it's why I love him as a friend, too. Sometimes, of course, it can be painful. For example, he would ask me, 'Are you sad that you only won the prize for Best Screenplay and not the Palme d'Or in Cannes?' And what can I say? He always cuts right to the truth, no matter what.