…….. This film is a thriller set in Cairo that takes us inside a world unknown to non-Muslims. Adam is an innocent young man, son of a fisherman, who is surprised and honoured to be awarded a scholarship to Al-Azhar University, the premier center of Islamic learning. Adam is a quiet studious lad who escapes from the excitement and culture shock by immersing himself in his studies. The university’s Grand Iman dies and the film follows the process of selecting his successor, and the efforts of state security to influence the selection process and insure that the newly elected Iman be someone who will operate as a state puppet. Somehow Adam gets drawn naively into this situation when the state’s inside man is murdered and he is recruited as the replacement informant, or mole. Adam is instructed to infiltrate a small band of radicalized Muslim Brotherhood students and soon finds himself in a very tricky and dangerous situation.
……. The acting is excellent and the film is beautifully shot, with Istanbul, Turkey, standing in for Cairo, Egypt, as director Tarik Saleh is banned from his home country. Ultimately the film is about the absolute corruption of both church and state, religion and politics, and how anyone can just be a pawn to be used by either side, and then discarded without thought or thanks. As the tension builds Adam finds himself walking a tightrope with disaster looming on both sides. In the end it is Adam’s devoted religious studies, deep knowledge of the Koran and pure soul, that bring about the film’s resolution.
“We don’t choose our own fate; God chose you.”
