Refreshingly, the Swedish-born director opts against picking from the low-hanging fruit of indicting Islam and hones in on the fallibility of human nature and our weakness for earthly desires instead.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2023

You could argue that it’s a little unlikely that the security forces should choose such a naive young man as Adam to do their inside work, but once you accept that notion then the film – actually made in Turkey – is a very effective thriller.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 8, 2023

The film’s biggest coup is the common thread it finds in both worlds: military back rooms and holy offices alike filled with the ambitious jostling for position.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 13, 2023

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.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 8, 2023

The uncomfortably thin veil between religion and politics is intriguingly lifted in Tarik Saleh’s “Cairo Conspiracy,” a low-key fictional thriller set at Egypt’s prestigious Al-Azhar University.

| Jan 27, 2023

“Cairo Conspiracy” is a measured but unsparing portrait of corruption perpetrated by people who, across the board, are utterly confident of their own rectitude.

| Jan 26, 2023

The journey of the film, and of Saleh’s sophisticated script, is to find grace notes of sympathy for this particular devil.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 6, 2022

Its lapses in storytelling mechanics [are] ignored easily enough for Barhom and Fares’ flinty-eyed performances.

| May 21, 2022

[A] labyrinthine but satisfying thriller...

| May 20, 2022

A compelling if somewhat conventional thriller in a highly unconventional setting, Boys From Heaven (Walad Min Al Janna) marks another solid entry from writer-director Tarik Saleh...

| May 20, 2022

There’s an intriguing mix of scorn and paranoia here, together with a yearning for individual figures of decency halfway down the food chain – it reminded me of John le Carré.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 20, 2022

There’s not enough dramatic excitement to back up [its] twists once they start to untangle.

| May 20, 2022