Foreign Film Series: Cairo Conspiracy
Adam, the son of a fisherman, is offered the privilege to study at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the center of power of Sunni Islam. Adam becomes a pawn in the conflict between Egypt's religious and political elites. The film is set at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, the most prestigious Islamic school in the world, founded in 972. The story is a wild one, a tense political thriller centering on Adam, a naive freshman from the sticks who gets recruited as a mole by Col. Ibrahim, an officer from the state security agency, to manipulate the election of the school’s grand imam, one of the most powerful positions in Sunni Islam. The goal is to finagle things by whatever means necessary, so that the government’s preferred candidate is chosen over another cleric being groomed by the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that some have called a terrorist organization. It is an engrossing tale, full of betrayal and chicanery, and it casts the Egyptian political-military complex and the religious hierarchy as riddled with corruption.