When you’re confronted with a truly groundbreaking piece of art, a certain disorientation is sometimes what you experience first. “A lot of journalists ask me: ‘What is real? What is real in this film?’” says the Swedish director Tarik Saleh, suddenly seized by a chuckling fit. “And I think this obsession is because the way the media portrays Muslims is so fictional that when people see a fictional film that portrays al-Azhar [University], they feel like they’ve seen a documentary. And I try to tell them: ‘No, it’s fiction!’”
He is talking about his new film Cairo Conspiracy, so seductive because it appears to give us privileged entry into what has been for most westerners a hitherto invisible world: al-Azhar University in the Egyptian capital, a vast hub of learning and theological wellspring for Sunni Islam. But it’s not the real al-Azhar, as it was all recreated in Turkey, following Saleh’s expulsion from Egypt in 2015 three days before his previous project The Nile Hilton Incident was due to begin shooting. What is real is the outrage the 51-year-old continues to hurl at Egypt’s powers-that-be in this clenched and cowed film. With the novice student Adam (Tawfeek Barhom) drawn into the battle to elect a new grand imam, it’s The Name of the Rose meets John le Carré.
