A fisherman's son wins the rarest kind of scholarship to Cairo's Al-Azhar University, only to find himself dragged into a struggle over who controls Sunni Islam's most powerful religious institution after its top cleric dies.
What is Cairo Conspiracy about?
Cairo Conspiracy opens with Adam leaving his fishing village for a place at Al-Azhar, an opportunity that should set his life on an entirely different course. Almost as soon as he arrives, the university's Grand Imam dies, and the vacancy sets off a fight between competing factions inside Egypt's religious establishment, each backed by political interests that reach well beyond the university's walls. Adam, still learning the building's corridors and customs, is pulled into the contest as a set of eyes and ears for people with far more power than he has, and has to decide how much of himself he is willing to spend on other men's ambitions. The film builds its tension out of institutions rather than gunfights: closed-door meetings, whispered instructions, and the slow realization that faith and politics inside Al-Azhar are impossible to separate. Director Tarik Saleh, working with a mostly Arabic-language cast, keeps the camera close on Adam's face as the pressure mounts around him.
About the cast
Tawfeek Barhom plays Adam, the student at the center of the story, alongside Fares Fares, Mohammad Bakri, Makram J. Khoury, Mehdi Dehbi, Younes Medhat, Yunus Albayrak, and Sherwan Haji as the officials and operators circling him.
Context & significance
Cairo Conspiracy is a Danish, Finnish, French, and Swedish co-production directed by Tarik Saleh, part of a loose trilogy he has built around Egyptian power structures. It earned festival recognition on release in 2022 and drew comparisons to classic institutional thrillers for the way it treats a university as a stage for state-level intrigue.
Watching Cairo Conspiracy on Ktime
The film streams on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles available, making its dense, dialogue-driven plot easy to follow for Farsi-speaking viewers. A free K-Time account login is required to watch; this page can be read without one.