George Fahmy, Egypt's most adored actor, is pressured to star in a film commissioned by the highest authorities. He reluctantly accepts and finds himself thrown into the inner circle of power. Like moth drawn to flame, he begins an affair with the mysterious wife of the general overseeing the project.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.5/10
IMDb: 6.6/10
Letterboxd: 3.32/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 75%
Metacritic: 70
TMDB: 6.8/10
Director
Tarik Saleh
Production
Unlimited Stories, Apparaten, Memento Production, Ström Pictures, Bufo, Films Boutique Production
Cast
Fares Fares, Lyna Khoudri, Zineb Triki, Amr Waked, Cherien Dabis, Ahmed Khairi, Nael Ali, Sherwan Haji, Suhaib Neshwan, Donia Massoud, Tamer Singer, Hassan El Sayed, Mohammed Nehmi, Pedram Hajigholi, Haitham Elsaadani, Mariam Elsayed, Yasser Ashraf, Linda Mutawi, Mustafa Peker, Hesham Abdel Hamid
Curator Review
Verdict
A politically charged thriller with a sharp premise and strong topical bite, but it sounds uneven in execution until the stakes finally tighten. Best approached as a tense, satirical look at power, propaganda, and compromise rather than a fully polished suspense machine.
Best for
Viewers drawn to political thrillers and regime satire
Fans of morally compromised protagonists
Audiences interested in Egyptian or Middle Eastern power dynamics
People who like slow-burn tension with a late surge of danger
Skip if
You want a tightly paced thriller from start to finish
You prefer clear-cut heroes and villains
You’re impatient with dialogue-heavy political maneuvering
You want light entertainment rather than institutional dread
Overview
Tarik Saleh’s film has an irresistible setup: a beloved actor gets pulled into a state-sanctioned production and is gradually swallowed by the machinery around it. That premise gives the movie a built-in tension between performance and coercion, vanity and survival, and the best parts seem to come from watching a man realize how little control he actually has.
Worth noting
The response suggests a film that is more compelling in concept than in execution for much of its runtime. Some viewers found it uneven or inert until the final stretch, when the danger becomes more immediate and the political stakes finally click into place. That unevenness may frustrate anyone expecting a relentless thriller.
Bottom line
Still, the film appears to have real force as a portrait of authoritarian spectacle and the seductions of proximity to power. If you’re interested in cinema that treats propaganda, celebrity, and state pressure as intertwined systems, this is worth a look even if it doesn’t fully sustain its promise.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Pierre (4★) · 327 likes
Tarik Saleh il a l’air de vouloir faire des films sur le régime égyptien jusqu’à ce qu’on l’assassine pendant que moi j’ose pas dire à la boulangère qu’elle m’a mal rendu ma monnaie
Annalei (4★) · 223 likes
par contre excellente initiative de proposer des cacahuètes au moment où ils sont en train de balancer des gens dans les airs
Matt Neglia (2.5★) · 153 likes
EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC had all the makings of a film that should’ve worked for me: a political thriller about an actor forced to star in a propaganda film for the Egyptian government while secretly playing both sides. So why is it so uneven, dull, and uninvolving? The third act finally gives the film the aura of importance it so desperately craves & introduces some life-or-death stakes, but up until that point, I couldn’t tell whether it wanted to be a… more EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC had all the makings of a film that should’ve worked for me: a political thriller about an actor forced to star in a propaganda film for the Egyptian government while secretly playing both sides. So why is it so uneven, dull, and uninvolving? The third act finally gives the film the aura of importance it so desperately craves & introduces some life-or-death stakes, but up until that point, I couldn’t tell whether it wanted to be a… more
Alaric_ (3★) · 133 likes
Dans le genre « un mec est contraint de se mettre au service du pouvoir égyptien et se retrouve pris dans une spirale de violence » je préfère Mission Cléopatre
1999 · Drama, Thriller · 2h 38m · R · Curator 8.9/10 (321K ratings) · Where to watch: Peacock Premium, Peacock Premium Plus
A strong fit for its corporate-political tension, moral risk, and escalating sense of entrapment.
Topics
political thriller, authoritarianism, propaganda, slow burn, moral ambiguity, satire, Middle Eastern cinema, power dynamics, psychological tension, drama