Tawfeek Barhom, Fares Fares, Mohammad Bakri, Makram Khoury
From Tarik Saleh, director of 2017’s political drama The Nile Hilton Incident, exploring the corruption that triggered the 2011 Egyptian revolution, comes this superb new conspiracy thriller set on a Cairo campus.
When Adam (Tawfeek Barhom), the son of a poor fisherman, receives a scholarship to the prestigious Al-Azhar University in Cairo – a power centre for Sunni Islam – his family sees it as a gift from God, but Adam’s fortune sours when the school’s Grand Imam dies.
Fearing a hardline replacement, the government tasks cynical secret serviceman Colonel Ibrahim (Fares Fares) with recruiting a spy. Adam finds himself on a steep and cynical learning curve, caught between warring institutions in an ambitious, complex and satisfying thriller that boldly satirises the politicisation of religion and official hypocrisy and offers a damning indictment of systemic corruption in the power spheres of Egyptian authority.