What do movie stars who headline pro-government propaganda films and videos actually feel about the process? What pressures are brought to bear on them? While we in India may not know for a long time, a film set in Egypt gives us some clues.

Tarik Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic (2025) revolves around the dilemma that faces George Fahmy (Fares Fares), who’s known to his fans as the "Pharaoh of the Screen. The box-office magnet is estranged from his wife, has a tense relationship with his son Rami, and has a lover just a little older than Rami’s girlfriend.

These personal niggles get entwined in a bigger mess for George when he is recruited to play Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in a hagiography that whitewashes el-Sisi’s role in the military coup that brought him to power. The dictator’s sinister aide Mansour (Amr Waked) makes George an offer he simply cannot refuse.

George initially doesn’t realise how far Mansour will go to tame what he sees as a degenerate, traitorous lot of artists. I don’t see a contradiction between being an artist and a patriot, Mansour declares. George tries to wing it, but Mansour is watching him, his family, his lover and even his co-stars a little too closely.

Eagles of the Republic can be rented from BookMyShow Stream and Prime Video. The Arabic-language film concludes Tarik Saleh’s Cairo trilogy, which looks at corruption, political interference and the undermining of liberal values in contemporary Egypt.

In the first film in the series, The Nile Hilton Incident (available on Mubi), a routine police investigation reveals the involvement of a businessman with connections to the political elite. The second film, Boy From Heaven, looks at the nexus between religious and political power brokers in Egypt.

All three movies star the charismatic Fares Fares, the Lebanese-origin Swedish actor who also has credits in Zero Dark Thirty, Rogue One and Chernobyl. In Eagles of the Republic, Fares is wholly convincing as an actor who comes to regret his prominence.

George comes to see the truth in an utterance by a friend who cautions him against agreeing to play el-Sisi: everything the regime touches rots and dies. Not that George has a choice.

Except for a plot development revolving around the defence minister’s wife Suzanne (Zineb Triki), Eagles of the Republic is a credible exploration of the interplay between cinema and propaganda. Designed as a thriller, the film is an often chilling exploration of what happens when a tyrannical regime decides to exploit fame and celebrity for its ends.

When George waffles about having principles, another friend tells him, principles are worse than AIDS. The sickness that ultimately infects George and everything he holds dear will be deeply familiar to Indian audiences.

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