Latest news with #TarikSaleh
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Gay Kink, Godard (Via Linklater) and German Girlhood: THR's Critics Pick the 20 Best Films of Cannes 2025
COMPETITION Tarik Saleh follows The Nile Hilton Incident and Cairo Conspiracy with a darkly funny thriller about a famous actor forced to play Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in a biopic. Reteaming with star Fares Fares, who headlined the first two movies, Saleh tackles the dirty dealings between the regime and the film industry, showing how artists are co-opted — or rather coerced — into making propaganda in a country leaving them few other options. — JORDAN MINTZER More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Young Mothers' Review: The Dardenne Brothers Bring Clear-Sighted Observation and Empathy to a Tender Snapshot of Women at a Crossroads Cannes Power Outage Disrupts City, Festival Continues Inside IMG's Huge Sports Production Weekend: From English, U.S., Saudi Soccer to Basketball and F1 OUT OF COMPETITION Spike Lee reunites with Denzel Washington in this dazzlingly entertaining spin on Akira Kurosawa's 1963 kidnapping procedural, High and Low. The plot has been transposed to an environment Lee knows well — New York City, lushly captured — allowing the director to make the film his own, with wit, high style and kinetic energy to burn. The cast is top-to-toe excellent, with special honors to Washington and, in key roles, Jeffrey Wright and A$AP Rocky. — DAVID ROONEY COMPETITION Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor offer more proof that they are among our best contemporary actors in Oliver Hermanus' tender account of a too-fleeting gay love affair interrupted by World War I. Adapted by Ben Shattuck from his short story, the film's romance blossoms from the intimate experience the two main characters share of traveling the backwoods of Maine in 1919, collecting traditional folk tunes from rural people. The director and his leads find quiet power in understatement. — D.R. COMPETITION Revolving around a group of ex-prisoners and the man they suspect of being their former torturer, Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi's intricately crafted drama examines the traumas suffered by political dissidents. The filmmaker puts aside the self-reflexive storytelling that has marked much of his work since he was first arrested in 2010, delivering a straightforward narrative that's plotted like a good thriller but builds into a stark condemnation of abusive power. — J.M. COMPETITION French cinema is littered with sexual coming-of-age films, but occasionally one comes along that cuts through the crowd with its confidence and texture, its erotic charge and lingering nostalgic ache. Hafsia Herzi's study of a Paris-area Muslim teen's lesbian awakening is such a film. Vibrantly felt yet impressively controlled — and blessed with a stone-cold stunner of a lead turn from newcomer Nadia Melliti — it's an instant queer classic, as moving in its humanism as it is sexy. — JON FROSCH COMPETITION Leave it to Kelly Reichardt to make a '70s movie that looks and feels like a lost '70s movie, from its scruffy visual aesthetic to its muted colors, its unhurried pacing to its unstinting investment in an underdog protagonist. Josh O'Connor is ideally cast as the out-of-work carpenter who pulls off a major art theft in a heist caper that spends as much time on the aftermath of the crime, when it morphs gracefully into another of the director's singular character studies of struggling Americans. — D.R. UN CERTAIN REGARD Akinola Davies Jr.'s feature debut — the first Nigerian film to premiere at Cannes — is a poignant meditation on the relationship between a man and his estranged sons, set over the course of a single day of Nigeria's 1993 presidential election. Considering how political unrest threatens not just the fragile optimism of a nation but also this family, the filmmaker employs a poetic visual grammar to envelop viewers in the memories of kids trying to understand their dad. — LOVIA GYARKYE COMPETITION Richard Linklater's charming homage, a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, is a far cry from Godard, stylistically. Yet it does an impressive job capturing the spirit of the man at work, showing what it took to put his groundbreaking movie together. With French newcomer Guillaume Marbeck as the iconoclastic auteur and Zoey Deutch as American leading lady Jean Seberg, the breezy film never takes itself too seriously while highlighting a very serious moment in film history. — J.M. COMPETITION Wes Anderson's latest won't have haters reconsidering, but it will entice those who've been feeling alienated to rejoin the ranks. The enchanting espionage comedy flaunts an excellent Benicio del Toro as a 1950s industrialist, who, after surviving an attempt on his life, names his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) as heir to his empire. With Michael Cera and Scarlett Johansson among the sprawling cast, the movie bears the auteur's trademark aesthetics but also a tenderness that sneaks up on you. — L.G. UN CERTAIN REGARD Abuse, cringe humor and unexpectedly sweet queer romance somehow coexist in Brit writer-director Harry Lighton's audacious and disarming first feature about the relationship between a stern biker (Alexander Skarsgard) and a shy suburban London traffic warden (Harry Melling). The film is less about the shock factor of some very graphic gay kink than the nuances of love, desire and mutual needs within a sub/dom relationship. Both actors are fearless. — D.R. UN CERTAIN REGARD Charlie Polinger's thrilling directorial debut observes boys at a summer water polo camp, with terrific newcomers Everett Blunck and Kayo Martin portraying opposite ends of the power spectrum and Joel Edgerton in a brief but effective turn as their coach. Working from his own screenplay, Polinger uses horror conventions to tease out the psychic terror and intimidation of preteen social codes. In the age of renewed questions about the manosphere, the movie feels sharply relevant. — L.G. DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT Set in 1990s Iraq, Hasan Hadi's exceptional debut feature revolves around a third grader on a mission to complete a dreaded school assignment: baking a birthday cake for Saddam Hussein. With well-known American filmmakers among its producers (Eric Roth, Chris Columbus, Marielle Heller) and a cast of mostly untrained actors, the stirring, humor-laced drama is as perceptive as it is kinetic and, with one eye on the U.S. bombers overhead, brimming with life. — SHERI LINDEN COMPETITION Chie Hayakawa's delicately moving drama depicts a crucial summer in the life of 11-year-old Fuki (lovely newcomer Yui Suzuki) as she navigates her father's battle with cancer, her mother's stress and her own persistent loneliness. Set in suburban Tokyo in 1987, the film follows Fuki as she wanders the city and retreats into her imagination. Hayakawa calibrates her story to the volume of a whisper, as if in a conspiratorial conversation with her own memories. — L.G. COMPETITION Wagner Moura makes a stellar return to Brazilian cinema after several years away, playing a technology expert fleeing the country in 1977 while hitmen hired by a federal official pursue him in Kleber Mendonça Filho's masterful political thriller. Despite some brilliant comic flourishes, this is a deeply serious movie about a painful time in Brazil's past, when people disappeared and even far-flung cities where the dictatorship was invisible felt its long reach. It's a major achievement, sure to be one of the year's best films. — D.R. COMPETITION Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning illuminate Joachim Trier's piercing reflection on family and memory, centered around a house in Oslo that has absorbed generations of experience. The director's observation of the mutable contracts between sisters, and even more so, fathers and daughters, is intensely affecting in a movie freighted with melancholy but also leavened by notes of surprising humor. With traces of Bergman but also Chekhov and Ibsen, the film explores the volatile power of art and the cost of making highly personal work. — D.R. COMPETITION French-born Spanish director Oliver Laxe's beguiling and beautiful fourth feature follows a father and son searching for a missing family member who join a group of itinerant ravers in the deserts of Morocco. The result is a techno-infused meditation on death, grief and possibility in a world edging toward collapse. The stunningly conjured location functions as both a repository for overwhelming feelings and a reminder of our own smallness in the grand scheme of things. — L.G. COMPETITION It's not every day you see a movie that resembles nothing you've seen before. German director Mascha Schilinski's bold second feature is just that: a transfixing chronicle in which the lives of four girls are fused into one long cinematic tone poem, hopping between different epochs without warning, painting a portrait of budding womanhood and rural strife through the ages. It's a work that reminds us how cinema can still reinvent itself, as long as there are directors audacious enough to try. — J.M. COMPETITION This impeccably directed, impressively acted Stalin-era drama from Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa follows a law school graduate who attempts to take on corruption in the Soviet system and winds up facing the consequences. It's a slow-burn story of political injustice filled to the brim with atmosphere — specifically the claustrophobia of the U.S.S.R. at the height of the Great Purge. Loznitsa is reflecting on the past here, but for anyone who cares to look, he's also holding a mirror up to the present. — J.M. UN CERTAIN REGARD Harris Dickinson's impressive first foray behind the camera follows an unhoused Londoner trying to get clean while stuck on a treadmill of addiction. Neither the writer-director — whose influences here include Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and Gus Van Sant — nor lead Frank Dillane, who acts with a nervy volatility offset by insouciant charm and humor, courts our sympathies, even as the film shows unquestionable compassion. — D.R. COMPETITION The latest from the two-time Palme d'Or-winning Dardenne brothers is their most surprising work in years. A tender and clearsighted ensemble piece, it provides unfiltered emotional access to the anxieties and hopes of five vulnerable working-class teenage women and the babies requiring their love and care, often when they can barely care for themselves. There's never a false note from the young actors, all of whom have deeply moving scenes. — D.R. A version of this story appeared in the May 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tarik Saleh on His Cannes Thriller ‘Eagles of the Republic' Forming a ‘Cairo Trilogy:' ‘It's About Men Trying to Defeat a City that Cannot Be Defeated' (EXCLUSIVE)
For a filmmaker making gripping thrillers dealing with religion and oppressive politics, Tarik Saleh is surprisingly funny and joyful. The filmmaker, who became Sweden's most prominent street artists before turning into one of the country's biggest star filmmaker, returns to the Cannes Film Festival with 'Eagles of the Republic,' three years after winning best screenplay with 'Boy From Heaven.' Saleh hit the ground running with his feature debut, 'The Nile Hilton Incident' which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2017. His sophomore feature, 'Boy From Heaven,' was an arthouse hit that traveled around the world and was chosen by Sweden as its Oscar entry. With 'Eagles of the Republic,' he's delivering his most ambitious film to date, reuniting with Fares Fares who stars as an Egyptian megastar coerced by the Egyptian government into starring in a propagandist film as President Al-Sissi. As he gets closer to the inner circle of power, he finds himself embroiled in dangerous conspiracies. Saleh, who produced the film through his own vehicle, Paraton, alongside Swedish banner Unlimited Stories and France's Memento, said he was compelled to make yet another film set in Cairo because he grew up in Sweden as 'a child of immigrants,' and through his work, he's 'been constantly trying to reclaim (his) own version of what Egypt is to me.' More from Variety 'The History of Sound' Review: Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor Star in a Gay Period Romance That's Like 'Brokeback Mountain' on Sedatives Neon Acquires North American Rights to Kleber Mendonça Filho's 'The Secret Agent' 'Homebound' Review: A Moving Friendship Drama Set Against a Politically Fractured India Besides having Cairo as a backdrop, Saleh said the common thread between 'The Nile Hilton Incident,' 'Boy From Heaven' and 'Eagles of the Republic' is that they're about 'men trying to defeat a city that cannot be defeated.' While the movie is a fiction, he admitted that he was inspired by an Egyptian TV series that was made about Al- Sissi played by a handsome actor who looked nothing like him. Ultimately, Saleh says he doesn't want to be labeled as a political filmmaker. 'I'm not an activist but I'm really fascinated by people in power,' he said. Since he knows 'people that work within the presidency in Egypt,' he was able to give the script enough texture to make the thriller gritty enough and filled with dark humor that ring true. In an interview with Variety at Cannes, Saleh talked about the making of 'Eagles of the Republic' and his aspirations, as well as what he'll do next, this time in France. How much of 'Eagles of the Republic' is based on reality and the way the Egyptian government works? Of course, there is a real story that inspired this film. In Egypt, the army has 30% of the country's economy and when (Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, Egypt's President) got elected, he said 'Let's get into media and film, too.' So the government basically took over the whole film industry and the television. They bought all the private television stations. And since they are owned by the army, they decided to do a television series about the President's rise to power. What they did was to cast this tall, handsome actor called Yaser Galal to play al-Sissi who's a very short guy and bold. It was absurd. I was watching this TV series, and there was zero irony, and of course, my first thought was, 'What if I got the call and was told I had direct this. What if my friend Fares had to play it? What would we do?' We couldn't say no because then we were banned. I thought that was a funny premise. How important is it for you to make films that are relevant, politically speaking? I think a lot of times art can predict what's going to happen. I was very nervous about 'A Boy From Heaven' that I would predict something for just selfish reasons, because I thought that if I was predicting something like this happens, then my film would become something all of a sudden. I had that issue for the premiere of 'Boy From Heaven' when the so-called 'Quran burning crisis' happened in Sweden. All of a sudden, it was in the news and I had a film out. It's exactly like what happened with 'Conclave' this year. So you don't want your movies to be political? What is politics? Politics is the relationship between power and people. So when you say 'a political film,' it might mean that it has an agenda, that it wants to convince you of a political view or of a way of looking at the world. My films are about human beings that are under the pressure of power systems. I'm very interested in power dynamics, but more like a spectator. I'm not an activist but I'm really fascinated by people in power. I actually know people that work within the presidency in Egypt. That's where I get a lot of my information. Oh, that's why 'Eagles of the Republic' feels very well documented! Some things in the movie are almost quoted from what people are saying and how they are. I'm fascinated with the technicality of how power operates. If you take 'Boy From Heaven,' the character I identify most with is Ibrahim, the state security officer, it's not the student. And in 'Eagles of the Republic,' I identify with Dr. Mansour. Because he's the real director of that film that is being made in 'Eagles of the Republic.' In many ways, it's also a film about the film industry in Egypt and the work of actors, in this case the local superstar George El-Nabawi. Yes, and usually Fares always asks me very difficult questions before we shoot, but this time, it's me who had a question. I asked him, 'Will we ever care about an actor and this one in particular?' Because I was thinking of Amber Heard during her trial, when she cried and everyone was ridiculing her. People said, 'Oh, it's not real. She's acting, right?' Because we think that actors are not displaying their real emotion. But Fares reassured me. He said to me, 'No, Tarik, we will care about him. I promise you we will care about him.' Fares pulled it off. He really makes George an endearing character. Fares made George human. I wrote him in a cynical way. That scene about Viagra at the pharmacy is very funny. Listen, that story happened to me. But without me asking for it. It's almost like a trilogy of movies set in Egypt. What keeps you luring you back to Egypt to tell stories? There are two reasons. The first reason was when you grow up as a child of immigrants, you are told stories by your parents about the home country that are almost fairytales — which is a paradox, because you wonder, 'Why are we here then if everything was great?' My father told me about Egypt, and I had these very vivid images of it. Then when I was 10 years old, for the first time, Anouar el-Sadate had just died, we could go back to Egypt. It was a shock. Almost the trauma of meeting the reality from all these fairytales that my father had built up around what Egypt was. And since then, I went to study art in Alexandria, and I started a magazine in Cairo. I've been constantly trying to reclaim my own version of what Egypt is to me. So I have very personal relationship to this place. Why is Cairo such an interesting backdrop for your films? In Arabic, Cairo means the conqueror. It's a very noir place. Every major city has a personality. Cairo is a place where people have come from all over Egypt and all over the Arab world to fulfill a dream but the problem is that you will not make it. It will bring you down to your knees. Cairo is a city which will ridicule you. It will cheat on you. It will sell you papyrus that is not real, and you will get stomach ache, but it will blow your mind and it will conquer you. The Cairo trilogy is really about men trying to defeat a city that cannot be defeated. Why did you want to shoot 'Eagles of the Republic' in 65 mm? That was the scale I wanted. It feels like cinema in that way. Ever since I saw 'Parasite,' I was dreaming of shooting on 65 mm in the back of my head. Then I saw 'Joker,' and it was the same feeling. It's wonderful for the way it treats the faces, it creates these beautiful textures. I was very fortunate to have had really great producers on this film. They gave me everything I asked for. I was a bit nervous before Cannes. I thought, I better get into main competition with this film because I have no one to blame. You worked with the Oscar-winning French music composer Alexandre Desplat on this film. How was that? It was a love affair. Love at first sight. Did you know he has Greek ancestry? He grew up watching Egyptian films, so right away he knew all the references, everything. So the first time he saw the film, he called me and he said, 'It's a film about a man selling his soul piece by piece.' I said, 'Oh, please write that music.' When we went to Paris to record the music, I started writing that night my new script. How hopeful are you that 'Eagles of the Republic' will find a good U.S. distributor who will campaign for it? I'm hopeful. I think that America is going through a difficult time. It's strange for me because I worked in America a lot, as you know. I think that there is a nervousness about, especially films dealing with Middle East and Arabic and so on. But I think that the difference with this film is that it doesn't deal with religion in the same way as the last one, ' A Boy From Heaven,' which really made people nervous. I could tell that people didn't know how to speak about it. I remember doing interviews with American journalists who were almost yelling at me, ''What is true?' And I was like, 'It's a fictional film!' Your last two films found an audience in theaters, and this one is even more accessible. Do you care how many people go see it in cinemas? For me, the relationship with the audience is key. A lot of directors say, 'I don't care. I just make these films for me…' But that's because they've never had an audience. The expectation of the audience is something you play with. I had a shock with 'Boy From Heaven' because Alexandre Mallet-Guy (the co-producer and French distributor) had bought it out of Berlin, he flew me to Paris and he said to me, 'Tarik, you made a really good film. If this doesn't reach 300,000 admissions in France I have not done my job.' That stunned me to see a distributor who takes responsibility. In the end, 'Boy From Heaven' passed 500,000 tickets. The cinema culture in France is almost sanctuary. I think that France has a lot to teach both America and the rest of Europe about how to engage audience and how to make the audience feel like it's an event, because I believe that cinema can actually save us. People are very pessimistic about the future of cinema but I believe it's very, very bright. Because our phones and these social media platforms, we have no way of escaping ourselves, there is this constant narcissistic feedback, and our lives are very shattered. What cinema offers us is this act of empathy where we, for two hours, live someone else's life and forget our own life for two hours. You're one of the leading filmmakers in Sweden. Do you think one day you'll make a movie there? I'm very close friends with Ali Abbasi and we were joking about the fact that he was invited to Egypt with 'Holy Spider,' and I was invited to Iran with 'Boy From Heaven.' But it happened back in the days, when Billy Wilder and and Elia Kazan or even someone like Milos Forman left Europe to go to America to find a platform to do films and to be free. I think that's going to happen now. We can only make those in Europe. We are European filmmakers in that sense that, as Billy Wilder was American filmmaker and he was talking about the horrors of what happened in Europe. More and more American filmmakers are actually now coming to Europe to make films. Yes, we've already seen the migration start to come here from the U.S.. In Europe, too, we have to start to protect our freedom, our artistic freedom of expression. We're also threatened by autocrats and fascists and people that wants to limit this. And now I sound like a political activist and a political filmmaker. You mentioned earlier you started writing your next film in France? There is a big chance I do something in France. A love story, then? There is always a love story somewhere. But I can say that it's still going to be a political thriller because I think that France has a lot of political thriller elements to talk about. To start with, it's a nuclear power. Best of Variety All the Godzilla Movies Ranked Final Oscar Predictions: International Feature – United Kingdom to Win Its First Statuette With 'The Zone of Interest' 'Game of Thrones' Filming Locations in Northern Ireland to Open as Tourist Attractions
Arab News
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Lyna Khoudri-starring film ‘Eagles of the Republic' premieres at Cannes
DUBAI: French Algerian actress Lyna Khoudri's film 'Eagles of the Republic' premiered this week at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, and it received a coveted standing ovation following the screening. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ Directed by Swedish Egyptian filmmaker Tarik Saleh, the film is the final chapter in his acclaimed 'Cairo Trilogy,' which includes 'The Nile Hilton Incident' (2017) and 'Boy From Heaven' (2022), the latter earning him the Best Screenplay award at Cannes. Set in Cairo, 'Eagles of the Republic' follows George El-Nabawi, a fading movie star who reluctantly agrees to play a role in a political biopic. Khoudri portrays Donya, a journalist who becomes entangled in the political intrigue surrounding the film's protagonist, Fahmy. The movie also features Swedish Lebanese actor Fares Fares — a longtime collaborator of Saleh — in the lead role, alongside French Moroccan actress Zineb Triki as Suzanne, the Western-educated wife of Egypt's defence minister, and Egyptian actor Amr Waked as presidential adviser Dr. Mansour. For the premiere, Khoudri wore a sculptural strapless Chanel dress featuring a voluminous skirt, a structured bodice, and folded detailing along the neckline. The gown was cinched at the waist and flared into pleats. She completed the look with white open-toe heels and a sleek bun. She attended the premiere alongside Saleh, Waked, French film composer and conductor Alexandre Desplat, and Kurdish Finnish actor, filmmaker and writer Sherwan Haji, who also stars in the film. Khoudri, 32, first rose to prominence in her role as Nedjma in Mounia Meddour's critically acclaimed drama 'Papicha.' For her work in the film, she won the Orizzonti Award for best actress at the 74th Venice Film Festival, and she was nominated in the Cesar Awards' most promising actress category. Khoudri also starred in the 2019 mini-series 'Les Sauvages' and in 2016's 'Blood on the Docks.' She was also cast in Wes Anderson's 2021 comedy 'The French Dispatch' alongside Timothee Chalamet, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Owen Wilson. The actress also stars in Martin Bourboulon's Afghanistan evacuation drama 'In The Hell Of Kabul: 13 Days, 13 Nights,' alongside Danish Bafta-winning 'Borgen' star Sidse Babett Knudsen, Roschdy Zem ('Chocolat,' 'Oh Mercy!'), and theater actor Christophe Montenez.
The National
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
From Gaza to Cannes: Arab films in the spotlight
This week on Culture Bites, Enas Refaei and Farah Andrews discuss some of the most promising Arab entries at this year's Cannes Film Festival, which is running until May 24. They tease some of the titles they're most eager to watch, including Once Upon a Time in Gaza, a revenge thriller directed by Gaza-born twins Tarzan and Arab Nasser. Another film that's making waves at the event this year is Swedish-Egyptian filmmaker Tarik Saleh's Eagles of the Republic, which is competing for the Palme d'Or award. The hosts highlight the valuable role film festivals play to introduce audiences to new cultures. Last week, Disneyland Abu Dhabi was announced. With the hugely-popular theme park coming to Yas Island, Enas and Farah give the scoop of what to expect when the park eventually opens. They chat about which Disney characters and imagery from the region could inspire the attractions at Disneyland Abu Dhabi. They also discuss the economic boost it will bring to the emirate and the wider region, such as job creation and infrastructure development.
Vogue Arabia
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue Arabia
Arab Cinema at Cannes is Having a Moment — But Don't Call it One
The Cannes Film Festival isn't just the world's grandest stage for cinema — it's also its most finely tuned mirror, reflecting not only the art but the politics, posturing, and latent anxieties of the film world. And this year, between the red carpets and Bella Hadid sightings, one truth has become unmistakable: Arab cinema has arrived, unapologetically, and on its own terms. Read More 5 Films by Arab Female Directors to Watch in 2025 From All That's Left of You by Cherien Dabis to Where the Wind Comes From by Amel Guellaty This year, four Arab-directed films are featured across the Festival's official selections — a number that, while conveniently neat, misses the point. This isn't tokenism. It's a tide shift. Arab cinema, long consigned to the circuit's margins — celebrated at home, politely acknowledged abroad — has taken its place at the centre. Eagles of the Republic, Directed by Tarik Saleh In Competition, Egyptian-Swedish director Tarik Saleh returns with Eagles of the Republic, a political thriller rendered with the precision of a scalpel and the force of a backhand. If his earlier Cairo Conspiracy whispered its truths, Eagles speaks them plainly — brutal, elegant, and bristling with unease. Fares Fares leads as a disgraced soap actor turned government spokesman, his charm long curdled. It's cynical. It's seductive. It's very Cannes.
