Early in “Eagles of the Republic,” main character George Fahmy (Fares Fares), a (fictional) superstar in the Egyptian film industry so popular and bankable that others (half-mockingly) bestow upon him the title “Pharaoh of the Screen,” gets told by an actor he looks down upon for starring in a recent government-backed propaganda picture that “I don’t see a contradiction between being an artist and being a patriot.” That’s a thorny line that all actors of a certain level of success need to question, as the difference between rousing Hollywood entertainment and glorifying nationalistic propaganda proves vanishing thin.
But if there’s one real moral value that Fahmy — otherwise a cheater, a liar, and an all-around selfish prick more concerned with his comfort than politics — prizes, it’s his integrity as an actor, and his belief that the work he does has real artistic value. So he scoffs at an offer to star in a film commissioned by the government that glorifies the rise of current Egpytian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to power – until he’s approached in his car one night by agents of the government threatening to disappear his teenage son. From there, the film becomes something of a political thriller, but it’s at its most interesting when it stops to question whether great art can — or even should be — made under the grip of totalitarian control.
Directed by Swedish-Egyptian filmmaker Tarik Saleh, “Eagles of the Republic” is the final film in his informal “Cairo” trilogy, which started with 2017’s “The Nile Hilton Incident” and 2022’s “Boy From Heaven.” Like those two movies, “Eagles of the Republic” is a thriller set in Cairo but produced outside of Egypt, with Fares in the main role. Each film has some sharp criticism toward Egyptian society and the government, but “Eagles of the Republic” matches it with a clear wistfulness for the country and affection for its cinematic tradition, complete with an opening title sequence that pays homage to the hand-drawn, richly colorful and emotional Egyptian film posters of the ’50s and ’60s.
Taking place (loosely) in 2015, the film unfurls at an unhurried pace across a two-hour runtime, working to situate the audience in Fahmy’s world and populate it with memorable supporting characters, from his much younger and tortured girlfriend or his gay manager. But the tension between Fahmy’s devotion to his craft and the life-or-death stakes of the situation he’s been forced into gives the film’s sometimes slack pacing some bite, and the film is dynamite whenever it goes on set to explore the making of the project, which a producer likens to Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments” — just to give a sense of the scale, and near religious worship for el-Sisi, that the monstrosity of a blockbuster is operating on.
Rattled by the threat on his son (an unimpressed and embarrassed teenager he nonetheless adores), Fahmy reluctantly signs on to the film, with the intent of finding a way to tell a compelling story around the state-sanctioned mandates. It proves more difficult than he expects, as the government bureaucrats overseeing the film tamper with the facts and make rewrites to glorify the regime. The film looks at the conflict through multiple angles, as Fahmy grapples with being made a symbol of the president against his will. He’s told not to wear a bald cap and makeup to better resemble the president, so that his likeness can instead be canonized with el-Sisi’s. In a scene with other actors playing Sisi’s fellow military officers, he tries desperately to get them to perform their roles with less deference toward the character.
Fahmy’s mild rebellious streak doesn’t go much further than that, but it’s enough to develop a feud between him and Mansour (Amr Waked), a shady government bureaucrat overseeing the production. Waked is excellent and menacing in the role, and Fares is never more compelling than when Fahmy is butting heads with Mansour on set. The sequences in which the crew shoots the movie also provide some of the most memorable technical flourishes for a film that’s largely sturdy and relatively unstylish, and Saleh has a bit of fun staging his tense thriller on some cheap looking soundstages.
Toward the last third, “Eagles of the Republic” starts to sputter its wheels, especially when it introduces a vital character in the form of Zineb Triki’s Suzanne, the outspoken wife of a minister overseeing the film who Fahmy falls for. While Suzanne’s motivations are intentionally murky and unknown to Fahmy, she still feels appallingly underwritten for how important she becomes to the film’s climax, and the duo’s affair proves an unconvincing blemish on the film’s climax. In general, the women of “Eagles of the Republic” tend toward the shallow, with Lyna Khoudri getting stranded in the rather shallow role of Fahmy’s long-suffering, daddy issues-afflicted younger girlfriend. It may be an intentional choice, given how we view this woman through the lens of Fahmy’s casual sexism, but both women still feel more like symbols than real people.
Just when “Eagles of the Republic” feels like it’s beginning to lag, Saleh thankfully manages to nail the film’s ending via a genuinely surprising third-act development that ups the stakes and allows Fares to really play Fahmy’s desperation. What makes “Eagles of the Republic” fascinating is how, even as it leaves the film world behind for more conventional political thriller trappings in its final act, it still ties the action to the struggles Fahmy undergoes as an actor and as a political mouthpiece. By the end, he sums up the plight of the profession succinctly: “We say words that aren’t our own and experience feelings that aren’t ours.”
Grade: B
“Eagles of the Republic” premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
