Swedish Egyptian director Tarik Saleh has spoken at length in the past about being banned from entering Egypt due to his Cairo Trilogy which explores police, religious and political corruption in the country over the course of its three films.
During a panel on cinema and resistance organized as part of the industry program at the Les Arcs Film Festival, Saleh revealed that the discontent of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s government with his work had had an impact beyond Egypt’s borders. (scroll down to look at the panel).
He was accompanied by his long-time French distributor and producer Alexandre Mallet-Guy, founding CEO of Paris-based company Memento Distribution, as well as sales agents Jean-Christophe Simon, CEO of Films Boutique as well as Margot Hervée, head of sales at Totem Films.
Simon and Hervée spoke about their experiences working with Iranian dissident filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof on The seed of the sacred fig and Maryam Moqadam and Behtash Sanaeeha on My favorite cake respectively.
Saleh recounted how he was tracked out of Egypt as he was about to shoot the first film in the trilogy: The Nile hotel incidentwhich won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema – Drama category in 2017.
Set on the eve of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, which ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship, the film is inspired by the real-life murder of singer Suzanne Tamim in 2008 and the shadowy attempts to protect the powerful real estate mogul behind her death, who has since been pardoned by Al-Sisi.
The film makes no mention of Al-Sissi, who came to power in a military coup in 2013 before being officially elected president in low-turnout elections in 2014, but its storyline nonetheless shook authorities.
“We had shot the whole movie and just a week before filming started, we were having lunch at the Swedish Embassy in Cairo… My producer got a phone call. There were a few Swedish journalists at that lunch, so she couldn’t speak openly. She just said to me, ‘Tarik, we have to leave.’ And I said, ‘Leave lunch?’ And she said, ‘No, we have to leave the country now,'” he said.
“We went back to the hotel, and the Egyptian producer was waiting for him, and he was pale-faced… he said, ‘State security was waiting for me at the Interior Ministry, and they said Tarik had a week to leave the country with his team, and after that we can’t protect him anymore’… which meant they would do something.”
Saleh never returned to Egypt. The Nile hotel incident ended up filming in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, while the following films in the trilogy – Cairo conspiracy (alias Sky Boy) and satirical political thriller Eagles of the Republic – filmed in Türkiye.
He told how Morocco has since closed its doors to him, revealing he was originally due to film his political thriller. Eagles of the Republic there, in a deal first negotiated when he was on the jury for the 2023 Marrakech Film Festival.
“I had met the king… they told me, ‘We would love to have you. I can’t wait for you to come back and shoot’… all that,” Saleh said.
“Then we learned that the script had been forwarded to the Interior Ministry, which is not a good sign,” he continued. “Normally it stays with the film commission…and it was only a month before shooting, so it was pretty late. We had done all the reconnaissance, everything, and then came the call you don’t want, and we were told we had to leave.”
Saleh suggested that Egypt’s military might, power and influence in the MENA region had dissuaded other territories from hosting the film. He kept shooting Eagles of the Republic in Türkiye, with Saleh fearing that a warming of previously antagonistic relations between Al-Sisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could also see him become a persona not grata.
“They had been arguing for five years, but all of a sudden Erdogan invited him to Ankara when we were filming. And I was like, ‘oh, my God, this is not good for us at all,'” he said.
Mallet-Guy added that financing Saleh’s films outside the MENA region has also proven impossible.
“At first we were quite naive. We thought we could get money from the Doha Film Institute or the Red Sea Film Festival, but the script was too sensitive,” he said.
“It’s quite a big budget. It’s around nine million euros, and it’s in Arabic. So it’s quite difficult to raise that kind of money. Fortunately, the Scandinavian system is quite favorable… and we received money from France, so we financed it from Europe.”
Eagles of the Republic had its world premiere in competition at Cannes in May, but unlike many of the Arabic-language films in this year’s selection, the drama did not make the rounds on the MENA festival circuit, a fact Saleh said he found “painful.”
Saleh suggested that the fact that Al-Sisi was also widely accepted by Western leaders also made his situation complicated.
“You have to understand that Al Sissi is the West’s favorite dictator, he is rewarded in France, Denmark and Donald Trump loves him,” he said, adding half-jokingly: “Sometimes I am even jealous of my Iranian friends because everyone hates Iran, so you are popular when you make films that criticize Iran.”
Jean-Christophe Simon, Margot Hervée, Alexandre Mallet-Guy and Tarik Saleh
Speaking about the challenges of working with Rasoulof, Simon revealed that he first contacted the director when Films Boutique was handling sales of There is no harm. That film won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale in 2020, but Rasoulof was subject to a travel ban and was unable to attend.
Still in the crosshairs of the Islamic Republic regime, Rasoulof was arrested in July 2022 for signing a petition titled “Lay Down Your Arms” calling on security forces to show restraint in the face of popular protests.
He was temporarily released in February 2023 from Evin Prison in Tehran due to health problems and placed under house arrest.
Inspired by his experiences in prison, he began creating The seed of the sacred fig under the radar, with the threat of being re-incarcerated hanging over his head.
Simon told how he swore his potential partners to secrecy as he set out to increase the film’s budget, while supporting plans to get Rasoulof and some cast members out of Iran.
“In total, no more than 30 people knew of the existence of the project and on my side, only five,” he said. “It was an involvement that went way beyond anything I expected when we started working together.”
Securing the film a premiere at Cannes, where it won the Special Jury Prize in 2024, just weeks after Rasoulof fled Iran by land, was also a key part of the plan, with all panelists agreeing to exhibition at a major, high-profile festival, adding another layer of protection for dissident directors.
Hervée, a totem seller, told how My favorite cake Co-directors Moghadam and Sanaeeha’s problems with Iranian authorities intensified after their home was raided just weeks before they were due to travel to the Berlinale for the film’s world premiere.
“About ten security agents came to their house and stole their hard drives and computers. Fortunately, they had sent the project to Etienne. [de Ricaud]their French producer, two weeks before the search, the film was therefore saved but otherwise it would have been lost,” she declared.
From a Western perspective, the film is a gentle tale of a lonely widow who enjoys a moment of companionship when she invites a taxi driver to her home.
The fact that it showed her without a veil, drinking wine and dancing, made her subversive in the eyes of Iranian authorities, Hervée said.
She said they had hoped the directors would be allowed to attend the Berlinale, but when they were banned from traveling it naturally became a hot topic for the press.
Totem’s involvement in the film and support from the directors did not stop there, with the company launching a campaign to raise awareness of their plight after Moghadam, who is also a Swedish citizen, was once again blocked from leaving the country.
“They had their passports back, so maybe that was the end of their travel ban… but when they were at the airport, they got their passports back, having booked everything. It was a really traumatic moment for Maryam and Behtash. It was mental abuse for them. It’s really horrible,” she said.
“There was a communications strategy around this, both internationally…we went to marketers…as well as international distributors and the response was truly amazing. They supported it and spoke to their local news agencies and some even offered to travel to their overseas offices.”
As Moghadam and Sanaeeha remain stranded in Iran, with the threat of prison time hanging over their heads, Hervée suggested that the support of the international film community has been instrumental in keeping them physically out of prison.
“They have this suspended sentence… they are at home but they could go to prison at any time… It’s like a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. But it could have been worse,” she said.
Watch the full conference below:
