Pierre Aïm, AFC, looks back at the challenges faced during the filming of Tariq Saleh’s "Eagles of the Republic"

George Fahmy, Egypt’s most adored actor, agrees under duress to star in a film commissioned by the country’s highest authorities. He finds himself plunged into the narrow circle of power. Like a moth drawn to the light, he begins an affair with the mysterious wife of the general supervising the film.

The film is marked by cinemascope aspect ratio and a certain graphic luxuriance ..

Pierre Aim : Tariq is someone who likes to give very clear directions for each film. I remember on The Cairo Conspiracy he asked me to shoot the film with a single lens, a single focal length. The narrative was very fictional, but the images were very realistic and uncluttered. Here, on the opposite, I immediately sensed his desire to have many tools on the set. A way of playing much more with all that is available ! The result, I think, is a more complex film, with several aspects and a form that’s fundamentally very different from anything we’ve done before.

The choice of Arri 65 gives a very cinematic, almost retro feel to the beginning of the film...

PA : Tariq told me he wanted to use this camera. He’d been very impressed by the image in certain films like The Revenant, for example. I think he really wanted that cinematic, grand spectacle feel that you can associate with the character of George, our protagonist, whose point of view governs almost the entire film. And shooting with such a large sensor also means you can adjust the depth of field to suit your needs. Never the less, the film is not entirely shot with very abstract backgrounds... But when needed to, we use this option. As far as lenses are concerned, I chose the Angénieux Prime series without any customisation. Most of these lenses cover the camera’s large format sensor... Only the widest lenses in the series (the 18, 21 and 24mm) required a 10% crop in the image to be used. Tariq also filmed a lot with zooms this time, and I actually had three on set, an Arri 50-110mm, a TLS 80-200mm and an Angénieux Optimo Ultra 36-435mm ! All these combinations give a very cinematographic tone to the scenes on set and even to George’s private life, as in his flamboyant flat.

Let’s talk a bit about the challenge of once again cheating Cairo on screen...

PA : Tariq does a lot of preparation for his films. With the help of his set designer Roger Rosenberg and his editor Theis Schmidt, they carefully chooses possible locations for each scene. Then I arrive, and they usually leave me two or three options for each set. The decisions are made together in the final part of the preparation. Just like on the other films where we had to cheat Cairo. The decision was made at the outset to shoot in Morocco (like Cairo Confidential, shot in Casablanca). But for production reasons, the film was finally relocated to Istanbul, abandoning a whole series of initial location scouts. This situation put us under a bit of pressure to find all the sets quite quickly. Fortunately, Eagles of the Republic has far fewer outdoor scenes than the previous films. So it was easier to cope with the situation... As Cairo is a dust and sand covered city where the air is constantly full of particles. Not always easy to fake on screen... On this film, we were very lucky with the exteriors, benefiting from weather that was often gloomy when we were shooting in Turkey, which compares quite well with the perpetually hazy sunshine in the Egyptian capital.

The film also has a slightly retro feel. We don’t see many mobile phones, and the interiors have a vintage feel...

PA : I realise that I used a lot more smoke indoors in this film. For example in the first part, with the film within the film, the sequences shot in the studio, or in George’s private life. It’s not something I use very often, but I thought it would mark out the ’perpetual film set’ aspect of his life. These sequences are also lit with fairly hard lamps, Fresnels for example, which no doubt gives the film a retro, timeless feel.

The comic side of the first part of the film emerges in one particular moment, the chemist’s shop scene...

PA : It’s funny because when I was shooting, I realised that this scene was quite funny, but I had no idea how much laughter it would provoke at Cannes. I remember that we were waiting in a real pharmacy in Turkey, and that I deliberately chose a rather contrasting atmosphere, with its fairly soft vertical lights falling from the ceiling, with the rest of the shop lost in darkness. Of course, it’s not at all like the often brightly lit atmosphere you find in pharmacies back home. I don’t know to what extent light contributes to the comic effect... but what I’ve learnt from all the films I’ve made is that in cinema it’s often much safer to trigger tears in a film... than laughter. Laughter is a much harder thing to control... and sometimes it can come out even more spontaneously than you’d imagined.

The military parade scene marks a turning point in the narrative...

PA : Another major sequence in terms of the shoot. It took us five days to do it. We drew a lot of inspiration from Russian and Chinese military parades, which are a kind of benchmark in that matter ! As we really didn’t have enough extras, we had to use a lot of special effects to multiply the number of soldiers and vehicles on the screen. As far as the camerawork is concerned, this is the sequence that really propels the film into its second half... It’s also where we started to shoot resolutely handheld, unlike the whole beginning, which alternated between still shots, crane movements and travelling shots. In fact, just before the event takes place, we’re still shooting around George’s character, in a very classic movement. But suddenly everything changes, and the style of the film becomes much more documentary-like. Even in the quieter, more intimate scenes - like the one in the hotel, for example, when George meets up with Suzanne - we’re on the shoulder, unlike their first night together in the first part of the film, where everything is much more fixed.

How did you shoot the amin action sequences, particularly the helicopter sequence ?

PA : We needed a studio week to film all the car sequences (on LEDs walls), as well as the helicopter sequence, for which we shot against a green background. This last sequence was a real challenge for the image, and required a lot of work on the part of the special effects team, as the studio in Stockholm wasn’t large enough . A lot of retouching was necessary afterwards to eliminate the green feedback on the shiny parts of the helicopter interior or on the actors on the tailgate opening outwards...

What do you keep from this film ?

PA : Basically, what I remember about this film is that even after all these years on set, it’s still a great pleasure for me to shoot. Having the opportunity to work with a director like Tariq, who always likes to challenge himself, is extremely motivating. One example that may go unnoticed on the scale of the film is the very simple scene when George and the entire staff are installed in a sort of basement room to manage the crisis at the top of the state. The idea of getting them into this room, and simply turning on the lights, gives a real urgency to the scene. It may seem simple, or obvious, but it’s in these kinds of details that we like to participate in the narrative of a complex film like this...

(Interview conducted by François Reumont for the AFC)