The movie with the best title at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is also the kind of movie filmmakers love to make: a movie about making a movie. But less joyously, the setting here is present-day Egypt, a nation not currently enjoying the delights of democracy. The creatives involved, beginning with Swedish writer-director Tarek Saleh, are largely members of the Egyptian diaspora who have a lot to say about the current state of the nation. Unfortunately they say a little too much; the plot twists pile up so thick and fast they almost cancel each other out. But at its core Eagles of the Republic understands the importance of movies and why governments want to control them.
George (Fares Fares) is a huge Egyptian movie star who enjoys the luxuries that being a huge movie star brings, most notably a wonderful apartment and a very pretty younger girlfriend, Donya (Lyna Khoudri). But all is not well at home, not least because George’s separation from his wife (Donia Massoud) is not public knowledge, and the cost of maintaining two residences is adding up. But George is also a devoted father to his teenage son Ramy (Suhaib Nashwan), so the double life and the hypocrisy is the price he’s willing to pay to maintain his public image. Donya is not so happy about it. But the fact of Donya becomes a pressure point when the frightening film censor Dr. Mansour (Amr Waked, more on whom later) decides that George’s next movie will be a propaganda film for the government. And while George is pragmatic about the need to make nice with the powers that be, he has no wish to tarnish his reputation by being in a bad movie. What is a big star to do?
Well, the answer is go to a business dinner with the military men creating the propaganda and find oneself discussing literature with the wife of one of the men present. Her name is Suzanne (Zineb Triki), she has a boldness unusual in a military wife, and is brave or foolish enough to express contempt for her husband’s work. George is knocked over in a way which a big star like him rarely is. Suddenly the idea of being in a bad movie isn’t so bad after all, not if it gets him closer to a woman like that. And besides, he’s famous, so his public reputation will protect him. What bad things could possibly happen?
The rest of Eagles of the Republic are the bad things, shot by Pierre Aïm in a bluntly matter-of-fact style that mirror George’s slow realisation of how much trouble he’s in. Mr. Fares weaponises his physicality here to show the ways in which George realises he had better start acting in every moment of his existence if he wishes to stay alive. This is only matched by a weary performance from Mr. Waked who plays his apparatchik as utterly exhausted by the necessity of his work, who wishes everyone would just sit down and shut up and do as they are told. When he must acquire that compliance by force or worse he will do it, but he won’t enjoy it. (Mr. Waked’s decision to play this part is all the more extraordinary because he is currently unable to return to Egypt, where he is facing a prison sentence for pro-democracy statements on social media.)
In the face of the might looming against them the courage displayed and hopeful plans discussed by various characters are less defiance and more idiocy. Privilege won’t protect you when the government decides to use all its weight to step on your neck. But things were OK for George before, so he hadn’t understood just how bad things truly were. And once he does, it’s too late.
Some of the smaller plotlines should have been pared back, and some of the comedic moments could have been blown up, for a sharper contrast with the horror. The complexities of the third act are tough to follow for those of us outside Egyptian society, but these kind of awful power struggles are common around the world and becoming more common in the west. One of the most unremarked aspect of the Cannes Film Festival is how it quietly supports filmmakers in their attacks on autocracy, dictatorships and fascism around the world. It does this by entering their films into the main competitions, by ensuring all films shown at the festival receive the same levels of press attention and publicity regardless of the fame of the stars involved, and by providing an open forum for film creatives to speak their minds without fear or favour.
Mr. Saleh’s previous film, Boy from Heaven, which also starred Mr. Fares, won Best Screenplay at Cannes in 2022, though his first attempt to move into Hollywood, also in 2022, with The Contractor starring Chris Pine, was not as successful. And while Eagles of the Republic is not an entire success, it exists because of how important it is for movies to tell the truth as their makers see it. American creatives should watch it and wonder how far off we are from the truth it knows.
Eagles of the Republic recently screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
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