Tarik Saleh & Memento, Films Boutique & Totem Execs Talk Challenges Of Navigating Censorship & Political Pressure – Les Arcs Industry Village

Egyptian Swedish director Tarik Saleh has talked extensively in the past about being banned from Egypt due to his Cairo Trilogy which explores police, religious and political corruption in the country over the course of its three films.

In a panel on cinema and resistance organized as part of the industry program of the Les Arcs Film Festival, Saleh revealed that the displeasure of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s government over his work had had an impact beyond Egypt’s borders. (scroll down to watch the panel).

He was joined by his longtime French distributor and producer Alexandre Mallet-Guy, founding CEO of Paris-based Memento Distribution, as well as sales agents Jean-Christophe Simon, CEO of Films Boutique as well as Margot Hervée, head of sales agent at Totem Films.

Simon and Hervée talked about their experiences working with dissident Iranian filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof on The Seed of the Sacred Fig and Maryam Moqadam and Behtash Sanaeeha on My Favourite Cake respectively.

Saleh recounted how he had been hounded out of Egypt when on the verge of shooting the first film in the trilogy, The Nile Hotel Incident, which won Sundance’s Grand Jury prize in the World Cinema – Dramatic category in 2017.

Set in the lead up to Egypt’s 2011 revolution, which ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship, the film was inspired by the real-life 2008 murder of singer Suzanne Tamim, and murky attempts to protect the powerful real estate tycoon behind her death, who has since been pardoned by Al-Sisi.

The film does not allude to Al-Sisi, who came to power in a military coup in 2013, before being officially elected as president in low turnout elections in 2014, but its storyline rattled the authorities, nonetheless.

“We had cast the whole film and just one week before we were going to start shooting, we were a lunch at the Swedish embassy in Cairo… my producer got the phone call. There were a few Swedish journalists at this lunch, so she couldn’t speak openly. She just said to me, ‘Tarik, we have to leave’. And I said, ‘Leave the lunch? And she said, ‘No, we have to leave the country now’,” he recounted.

“We went back to the hotel, and the Egyptian producer was waiting there, and he was like pale in the face… he said, ‘State security was waiting for me at the Interior Ministry, and they said Tarik has one week to leave the country with his crew, and after that we can’t protect him’… meaning they would do something.”

Saleh has never returned to Egypt. The Nile Hotel Incident ended up shooting in the Moroccan city of Casablanca, while subsequent films in the trilogy – Cairo Conspiracy (aka Boy From Heaven) and satirical political thriller Eagles of the Republic – filmed in Turkey.

He recounted how Morocco has also since shut its doors to him, revealing he had originally been due to shoot his political thriller Eagles of the Republic there, in a deal first brokered when he on the jury of the Marrakech Film Festival in 2023.

“I had met the king… they said, ‘We’d love to have you. Can’t wait for you to come back to shoot’… all that stuff,” said Saleh.

“Then we heard that the script went to the Interior Ministry, which is not a good sign,” he continued. “Normally it stays with the film commission… and it was only one month before the shooting, so it was quite late. We had done all the recce, everything, and then came the call you don’t want, and we were told we had to leave.”

Saleh suggested Egypt’s military might and power and influence in the MENA region had scared other territories off from hosting the film. He went on to shoot Eagles of the Republic in Turkey, with Saleh then concerned that a warming of previously antagonistic relations between Al-Sisi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could see him become persona not grata there too.

“They had been in a fight for five years, but all of a sudden, Erdogan invited him to Ankara at the same time as we were shooting. And I was like, ‘oh, my God, this is not good for us at all’,” he said.

Mallet-Guy added that funding Saleh’s films out of the MENA region has also proved impossible.

“We were quite naive at the beginning. We thought we could get some money from the Doha Film Institute or from the Red Sea Film Festival, but the script was too sensitive,” he said.

“It’s quite a big budget. It’s like nine million euros, and it’s Arabic language. So this is quite challenging to raise this kind of money. Fortunately, the Scandinavian system is quite supportive… and we got some money from France so we financed it out of Europe.”

Eagles of the Republic world premiered in Competition in Cannes in May, but unlike many of the Arabic language films in this year’s selection, the drama has not gone on to tour the MENA festival circuit, a fact Saleh said he found “painful”.

Saleh suggested the fact that Al-Sissi is also widely accepted by Western leaders, also made his situation complicated.

“You have to understand that Al Sissi is the favourite dictator of the West, he gets awards in France, in Denmark, and Donald Trump loves him,” he said, adding, half-jokingly: “Sometimes I even get jealous of my Iranian friends because everyone hates Iran, so you’re popular when you make films that criticize Iran.”

Talking about the challenges of working with Rasoulof, Simon revealed he had first connected with the director when Films Boutique handled sales on There is no Evil. That film won Berlinale Golden Bear in 2020 but Rasoulof was subject to a travel ban and unable to attend.

Continuing to be caught in the crosshairs of Islamic Republic regime, Rasoulof was arrested in July 2022 for signing a petition titled “Lay Down Your Arms” calling on security forces to exercise restraint in relation to popular protests.

He was released on a temporary basis in February 2023 from Tehran’s Evin jail due to ill health and placed under house arrest.

Inspired by his experiences in jail, he started making The Seed of the Sacred Fig under the radar, with the threat of being re-incarcerated hanging over his head.

Simon recounted how he had sworn potential partners to secrecy as he set out about raising budget for the film, at the same time as supporting plans to get Rasoulof and some of the cast members out of Iran.

“In total, not more than 30 people knew about the existence of the project and from my side, only five,” he said. “It was an involvement that goes far beyond anything I would have expected when we started to work together.”

Securing the film a premiere in Cannes, where it won the Special Jury Prize in 2024, just weeks after Rasoulof fled Iran by land, was also a key part of the plan, with all the panellists agreeing exposure in a big A-list festival added another layer of protection for dissident directors.

Totem sales agent Hervée recounted how My Favourite Cake co-directors Moghadam and Sanaeeha’s woes with the Iranian authorities ratcheted up after their home was raided just weeks before they were due to head to the Berlinale for the film’s world premiere.

“Ten security agents came to their house and stole their hard drives and computers. Luckily, they had sent the project to Etienne [de Ricaud], their French producer, two weeks before the raid so the film was saved but otherwise it would have been lost,” she said.

From a Western standpoint, the film is a sweet account about a lonely widow who enjoys a moment of companionship when she invites a taxi driver into her home.

The fact it shows her without a veil, as well as drinking wine and dancing, made it subversive in the eyes of the Iranian authorities, said Hervée.

She said they had held out hope that the directors would be allowed to attend the Berlinale, but when they were barred from travelling it naturally became a news story for the press.

Totem’s involvement in the film and support of the directors did not end there, with the company getting behind a campaign to re-raise awareness around their plight after Moghadam, who is also Swedish citizen, was prevented once again from leaving the country.

“They had their passports back, so it was possibly the end of their travel ban… but when they were at the airport, they took the passports back, after they had booked everything. It was a really such a traumatic moment for Maryam and Behtash. It was mental abuse for them. It’s really horrible,” she said.

“There was a strategy to communicate around that both on an international level…we went to the trades… as well as international distributors and the response was really amazing. They supported it and went to their local press agencies and some even offered to go to their foreign offices.”

As Moghadam and Sanaeeha remain stuck in Iran, with the threat of a prison sentence hanging over their heads, Hervée suggested the support of the international film community has been instrumental in keeping them physically out of jail.

“They have this suspended sentence… they’re at home but they could go to prison at any time… It’s like a Damocles sword over their head. But it could have been worse,” she said.

Watch the whole talk below: