After Confidential Cairo who denounced an Egyptian military police under the orders of politics, Tarik Saleh puts religion at the heart of The Cairo Conspiracy, screenplay prize at the Cannes Film Festival, on screens Wednesday 26 October. We met the Egyptian filmmaker in Paris: in his remarks, collected from Momento, producer and distributor of the film, he defines an Egyptian Muslim exception, and that of the Al-Azhar Islamic University where the action takes place. Persona non grata in Egypt, and while Iran is experiencing a historic uprising against the mullahs in Iran, Tarik Saleh is visionary and positive.
FranceInfo Culture: With “Le Caire confidential” (2016), you made a film about the relationship between the police, politics and religion. In “The Cairo Conspiracy”, it is about justice, politics and religion. Did you think of directing a diptych, and do you have in mind a third film to come, which would complete a triptych on Egyptian society?
Tariq Saleh: For each of my films, I make it as if it were the last. When you make a film, it must not look like what has already been made. With The Cairo Conspiracy, it was the last for me. And then I started to write. I always write three scripts in parallel that complement each other, to finally make one, with three stories inside. I choose there what corresponds to a moment of my life. One of them after The Cairo Conspiracywas indeed the second film of the diptych that you mention, but the others took other directions.
It is however certain that evoking a given society by the different centers which govern it is one of the means of being closest to it. In Confidential Cairo, what I wanted to demonstrate is that the police in Egypt is the army. When there was the 2011 revolution, it was against the police that the people rose up. But after the 2013 coup, the problem became that of the relationship between religion and the state. There is now after the police and the army, religion which occupies a large place in Egypt.
Where did you film since you are forbidden to stay in Egypt, and did you encounter any difficulties?
I shot in Istanbul, without any problem, apart from the fact that Sissi [le président égyptien Abdel Fattah al-Sissi] and Erdogan [le président turc Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] don’t like each other very much.
While Iranians are rising up in Iran at the moment against the Islamic dictatorship, is there a parallel between the religious power exercised in Iran and the place of Islam in Egypt?
No, it’s totally opposite. Iran is ruled by Mullahs and Ayatollahs, while Egypt is ruled by the military. It’s a huge difference, but there are similarities between us: Iranian men and women and religion are very powerful in our two countries. This is why religion has always tried to control the people. Iran had a female health minister. Even a dictatorial theocracy can have women in power. It’s not like in Saudi Arabia where a woman can’t drive a car. The difference with Egypt is that in Iran, it is the religious who want to impose themselves on the people, whereas in Egypt, it is the people who demand more religion. The Egyptian power is therefore trying to curb its influence.
Even if Egypt is not Iran, how do you view this historic uprising?
What is happening in Iran today (after the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini by Iran’s morality police) is similar to the Arab Spring. It was the young people who rose up to say: we no longer want your system, we reject it, we want to choose. Of course we would like happiness to fall from above, but the only solution is to take this freedom, no one will give it to you. In Egypt, the religious have always wanted to remain below power, they do not seek it. In this sense, Egypt is a secular country. Thus the Al-Azhar University of film has always aligned itself with the power in place. When Egypt became socialist, the mullahs found justifications for socialism in the Koran and when Mubarak aligned himself with America, they found justifications for capitalism, and so on. Al-Azhar has a very moderating force in Egypt. But being one of the largest universities in the world, with 300,000 students, there are all kinds, from fanatics to the most liberal.
Take the example of the veil, from which the current uprising in Iran started. The majority of women in Egypt did not wear the veil. It only appeared at the beginning of the 1990s. There was then a wave around 1995, it did not come from above, but from the desire to show one’s identity, to provoke Egyptian power. Hosni Mubarak’s wife did not wear the veil, while more and more Egyptian women were wearing it. It was a silent protest to say: we are not like you. We are religious, you are not.
Your film brings to the heart the quarrels between different factions within Al-Azhar: what role does religion play in Egypt?
In Egypt religion has a huge influence, but it is not a theocracy. From the 90s, even the poorest young girls began to wear a veil, television presenters got into it, actresses wore the veil… It became a fashion, a trend. But this soft power went until the Muslim Brotherhood dominated the army. President Sissi is the head of state and his wife now wears the veil. And since then, Egyptian women have removed the veil. It’s a mass movement, but it’s not like in Iran, there is no morality police in Egypt, we let women do what women want to do with the veil. The Egyptians are above all Egyptians, their religious identity comes after.
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What is interesting in Al-Azhar is that it is a very Egyptian institution, the Egyptians are proud of it, as well as of its mode of operation. Sisi went to Al-Azhar when he wanted to challenge the Constitution. The mullahs answered him that they had nothing to say to him, that he was the president and that he had a parliament for that. What Sisi wanted was a recommendation, a fatwa, and if Al-Azhar gave him one, he would apply it, which Al-Azhar does not want.
You convey meaning in your films with rhythm and action, is that an American influence?
No, I’m a big fan of European cinema, and crazy about Jean-Pierre Melville, which those who know me know well. It was he who gave meaning to the action. I also really like John Le Carré, which has often been adapted for the cinema, and Umberto Eco for The name of the rose. But as directors, I really like Polanski, despite what pursues him (gene). For the Americans – I worked there on the series Westworld Where Ray Donovan -, I am convinced that we make better films than them. We make movies that they can’t make.
I was thinking of William Friedkin (French Connection).
A yes, OK, then him, I adore him!