With The Cairo Conspiracy the Swedish director of Egyptian origin, Tarik Saleh, signs a panting politico-religious thriller. In a high place of Sunni Islam, Al Azhar University in Cairo, where young Adam, a poor fisherman, who obtained a scholarship, comes to study theology.
Innocent, naive, Adam is caught up in a plot that is beyond him, when, on the death of the Grand Imam, the political police make him a spy, he must infiltrate a group of Muslim brothers, a radical brotherhood that wants to impose its candidate on the head of Al Azhar.
For more than 1000 years, the control of this institution has been an issue of fierce political struggles, in a religious space where the boundary between temporal power and spiritual power is blurred, if not non-existent.
The director who had already hit very hard in 2018 with girls, her first feature film – the story of a dancer born a boy, who dreams of becoming a star – returns this time with a story of friendship – also awarded at Cannes by the Grand Prix of the festival – between two teenagers aged 13 years, Léo and Rémi, very close and inseparable, that their classmates think of being in a couple, which moreover will make their relationship falter, and cause a drama.
Lukas Dhont explains that he wanted to stage two young and sensitive male characters. Close is a very nice film about friendship, mourning, absence, also about the difficulties for teenagers to communicate with their parents.