In 2017, Confidential Cairo made Tarik Saleh known to the general public. The Swedish director of Egyptian origin explored, with the codes of thriller, the last days of the corrupt regime of Hosni Mubarak, overthrown in 2011.
This year, Tarik Saleh returns with another fascinating genre film, presented at the Cannes Film Festival in the official selection: the spy thriller Boy From Heaven. Its action takes place in Al-Azhar University, in Cairo, a high place of teaching and study of Sunni Islam. Adam (Tawfeek Barhom), a fisherman’s son, has just joined the faculty when the Grand Imam, the supreme religious authority, dies. The replacement of the latter will give rise to intense maneuvers on the part of the religious and political powers, maneuvers in which Adam will find himself involved against his will.
Passing through the Croisette to defend Boy From Heaven, Tarik Saleh, 50, answered questions from Courrier international. His film will be released in France on November 9.
COURRIER INTERNATIONAL How did you come up with the desire to shoot a film whose action takes place at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the epicenter of Sunni Islamic power?
TARIK SALEH My grandfather [paternel] studied at Al-Azhar, and it has always fascinated me. As the years passed, everything I read about college only fueled my interest. Then I reread The name of the rose by Umberto Eco, a novel I had discovered as a teenager [le récit d’une enquête policière dans une abbaye du XIVe siècle, sous l’Inquisition]. And I was like, “Wow! Would it be possible to tell such a story inside Al-Azhar?”
My grandfather was a fervent believer, he knew the Koran by heart. He was also very open-minded. He questioned everything. He had made the hajj and could, for example, declare that if the Prophet were still alive and discovered the mass phenomenon that the pilgrimage to Mecca has become, he would forbid us to do so. This is the Islam in which