Shows:
Sat, 2/11, 1:00 pm

Sweden's submission for Best International Feature Film • 2023 Academy Awards®
Director Tarik Saleh In Person

In the latest from Swedish-Egyptian director Tarik Saleh (The Nile Hilton Incident), Tawfeek Barhom plays a naive religious-scholarship student thrilled to be at Cairo’s prestigious Al-Azhar University—until finding himself pulled into a cascade of murders, conspiracies, and paranoia.

The ensuing labyrinthine plot lets Saleh explore the tumult of jockeying for influence between religious and ostensibly secular institutions in Egypt, and the insidious corruption that’s endemic to both. With a strong cast and a point of view that’s somehow at once artfully detached and deeply committed.

Cairo Conspiracy mixes moviemaking styles familiar from the likes of Terry Gilliam’s dark comedies and John le Carré’s spy dramas, fashioning a film that’s as much a biting satire as a political thriller.

More than ten years after the Arab Spring, this story is as timely as ever, and relevant no matter where in the world you live. In Arabic with English subtitles.

Director Tarik Saleh (Sweden 2022) 125 min.
MVFF45 Official Selection  |  US Premiere
Also known as Boy from Heaven

For the 19th consecutive year, the California Film Institute presents a selection of Oscar® submissions from around the world for consideration in the 2023 Academy Awards® Best International Feature Film category. For Your Consideration is a rare opportunity to watch a selection of these outstanding international films, many of which are top film festival prize winners.