Boy from Heaven: Tarik Saleh's thriller set in Egypt's Al-Azhar
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Loading... - oscar theo
- 30 May 2022
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Tarik Saleh, the Swedish-Egyptian director whose new film Boy from Heaven premiered in the competition section of the Cannes Film Festival, makes light of being called bold and brave for his work.
“I know Egyptians and Saudis who go out and say the truth. [They] go to jail, get tortured, get out and tell the truth again. Those are brave people,” he told Al Jazeera.
“I have a Swedish passport. I live in Europe. I shot the film [that is set in Cairo] in Istanbul,” he says.
Nevertheless, Boy from Heaven is set to ruffle feathers with its portrayal of corruption, hypocrisy, and power struggles within Egypt’s religious establishment and the state.
The film is a thriller about Adam (played by Tawfeek Barhom), a young man from a fishing community in northern Egypt who receives a grant to study Islamic thought at Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar University only to become embroiled in a conspiracy to elect the next grand imam. It is a story of spying and scandal, informants and assailants, intrigues and killings.
Film critic Peter Bradshaw praised the “intersection between a conspiracy-thriller and a more general human drama” in the film.
“Boy from Heaven reminded me a little bit of the English author John Le Carré, who of course writes about spying and the human cost of that job,” he told Al Jazeera. “[Saleh] is also boldly challenging the corruption of church and state,” says Bradshaw.
Saleh’s last outing, The Nine Hilton Incident, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival but was banned in Egypt for its portrayal of corruption in the country’s police.
Saleh thinks that it is his job to make films without thinking of the potential fallout.
“I believe that as an artist, you must tell the truth; the emotional truth because there is no objective truth. If you are specific, and you’re trying to be honest, and you don’t speculate, there is a chance to actually say something [of significance] through cinema,” he says. Read More…
