Tonight I am going out with an old friend, i guess we have known each other for 30 years, we are going to the cinema for an interesting film "Boy from Heaven", director Tarik Saleh, taht have received Best Screenplay from Cann festival 2022 and 11 other nominations.

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.

Director Tarik Saleh (Sweden) and one of the actors Hassan El Sayed (Denmark) is my friend where we also go to fitness together and actually working in the same company :-)

This movie has shaken Egypt to its very core, it has been deemed so provocative that it is BANNED. The director is Egyptian, the move is set in Cairo (yet filmed funnily enough in Istanbul because of the ban). It has yeilded award in the Cannes film festival, and it is simply put SUPERB.

The genre is of the captivated and serious kind, but also of the holy, which suits its original film title. Tarik Saleh put his hand on a timeless aspect of Egyptian politics: the power interplay between the political leaders (the military) and the religious figures (Al Azhar). Never has this sensitive issue been addressed before, in the arabic world, neither in the Shiatisk branch of the Islamic religion.

In this film, Tarek Saleh worked the religious imagery and the beauty of the spiritual ritual in a way that reminded me of Paolo Sorrentino's "The Young Pope": they both depicted in high detail the serenity of the religious system as well as its terrifying rigour. And Saleh got a few great shots of some red hats! Tarek Saleh has caught the eye of the international cinema community for quite a while, but now has cemented himself as one of the best directors in Egyptian cinema.

Great casting, cinematography, pacing and story. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.The camera is well used, the atmosphere build up is immensely satisfying. And it ultimately proves the old saying "Man will be free when the last King has been strangled with the last priests entrials"- This is a CULT movie in the making. Unfortunately you will never see this film in Egypt, and other Muslim countries in the Middle East region :-(

The reason why this issue was/are not addressed by neither by the Egyptian cinema nor the Syrian, nor the Iraqi and neither for the Iranian cenima, is simple: censorship.

Egyptian or we can say Muslim moviemakers and actors would not be allowed to talk about this taboo. Indeed, this movie will not be played in Egyptian cinemas neither in many other Islamic countries in the Middle East region

* The movie - understandably - fails to capture any Egyptian essence. Dialogues are unnatural. Characters and attitudes are artificial. Add to this the fact that the cast is virtually Egyptian-free (for the reasons described above). They are therefore incapable of smoothing the dialogues into something that feels more natural

Still, the movie is riddled with espionnage clichés. Whichever you can think of, you will find in Boy from Heaven. Egyptian classical music is played at unlikely places. Scene transitions are often abrupt, evidencing issues with the montage.