“A compelling, cleverly constructed comedy-thriller with plenty on its mind”—on November 14, Scandinavia House presents a special screening of Sweden’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards: the political thriller Eagles of the Republic.

In this Cannes-selected culmination of Tarik Saleh’s Cairo trilogy of films about Egyptian institutional corruption (The Nile Hilton Incident, 2017; Boy From Heaven, 2022), what begins as a rollicking satire on celebrity worship and filmmaking’s ideological obligations soon knife-twists into a violent political-conspiracy thriller.

Veteran movie star George Fahmy (Fares Fares) thinks he can get away with anything. The film censorship board can’t dilute his horny blockbusters like The First Egyptian on the Moon; while offscreen, separated from his wife and son, he savors public adulation and secular pleasures with his much younger mistress. Even when government goons coerce the “Pharaoh of the Screen” to star in a glowing propaganda biopic as real-life president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, George is confident he can control the narrative. But once Sisi’s top officials have him in their rotten, bureaucratic beaks and talons, George begins to realize that an authoritarian leader might be less dangerous than the vicious schemes of those hovering in the background.(Sweden/France/Denmark/Finland/Germany, 2025

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