June 9, 2026
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Thriller Reveals Egypt’s Troubles at Sonoma Fest
by Doniphan Blair
Author Doniphan Blair enjoying the Sonoma Film Festival for his 15th time, in the park in front of the classic Sebastiani Theater. photo: D. Blair PLEASE support our GoFundMe campaign to cover research expenses for our articles and rebuilding the cineSOURCE site.
Although the Sonoma International Film Festival suffered setbacks a few years ago, cineSOURCE is happy to report it’s doing as good as ever—we’ve been covering it since 2010—guided by new director Ginny Krieger and film scout Carl Spence. Indeed, they’ve proved very talented at finding first-order films, which regularly sell out their venues, of which they have six around Sonoma, including the classic Sebastiani Theater.
Sure, attendees are mostly elderly and almost all White, but they’re super woke, and People of Color are welcomed, almost excessively. The thing is, true multiculturalism is about mixed incomes as well as ethnic, political and sexual orientation, so c’mon up for a fabulous vacation. At only one-hour drive from my place in West Oakland, it saves on airfare to France, and features almost as good, not-that-expensive food (plates can be had for under $20) and drink, due to the wine market’s collapse (inevitable after a 40-year boom).
The scene from the excellent Mexican film 'On the Road' signaling we are in for a wild, gay ride. photo: D. BlairGiven Sonoma’s elevated wokism, I assumed the top film of the 29th SIFF would be the shocking but stunning movie, called “the Mexican gay porn film,” by those who’d seen it or heard the buzz. Although its actual name, “On the Road”, wasn’t that evocative, it did reference its subject matter, Mexican truckers. “On the Road” starts almost like a documentary, with a deep dive into trucker life south of the border: on the proverbial road, hanging at truck stops, engaging in gay sex, that little reported but quite common activity in men-only communities.
I was fascinated, not only because “On the Road”—written and directed by the very talented David Pablos (see trailer here)—had stellar characters, cinematography, dramatic development and moments of reverie, but because I hitchhiked the length and breadth of Mexico in the ‘70s, rode on many trucks, and met some gays. The trucks were old-school back then, but now it’s all American-style 18 wheelers, replete with airplane-like cockpits and beds in the back for the "rendezvous amoroso."
As it happens, researchers rate Mexico as highly sexual for a Catholic country, and “On the Road” captures that in full, from the slow-burn build between the divorced trucker and his hot, coke-dealing, barely-legal hitchhiker to their visit to a truck stop, where a deluxe tracking shot shows us extensive fucking and sucking, albeit mostly heterosexual.
Note to the easily offended: “On the Road” features more full-male frontal than any commercially-shown American film I have ever seen, aside from “LA Plays Itself” (which shocked New York hipsters in 1973), hence our Mexican-gay-porn moniker. Nevertheless, “On the Road” was so well motivated and shot that Sonoma’s wokesters and Mexican Catholics, of which there are many, wouldn’t have been able to cancel it, even if they had quickly organized a protest.
Despite my dedication to Latin American queer culture, which I’ve covered from my 1984 “Gays of Nicaragua” article in The Advocate to my interview with the monumental but still unknown artist, author, anthropologist and homosexual Tobias Schneebaum, who lived with queer cannibals in the Peruvian jungle in the 1950s, I have to relegate “On the Road” to second best of the nine films I saw at the SIFF.
Fares Fares (male, center) beautifully renders a world-weary Egyptian movie star in Tarik Saleh's 'Eagles of the Republic', an Egyptian ex-pat tour de force. photo: courtesy T. SalehMy first prize goes to “Eagles of the Republic”, which investigates Egypt’s corrupt upper classes and commercial film scene, the Arab world’s largest, with the anthropological insight and eventual violence of how “On the Road” captured Mexican truckers. Although “Eagles” is a thriller and marches along workman-like, without “On the Road”’s inner reveries or raw sex, it is radically personal. It follows George Hadad (or something like that), who is an artist and decent guy as well as Egypt’s biggest movie star, as he tries to negotiate with his girlfriends and gay agent as well as the military and police, from whom he retrieves a neighbor’s falsely-arrested kid.
Being a thriller, it includes an attempted coup d’etat at the military parade where George has reluctantly agreed to speak, to allay suspicions he opposes the military. The parade is held every October 6th to commemorate Egypt’s 1973 surprise attack on Israel. Even though the army was defeated within 19 days, that is three times the Six Day War and it was graded on a sliding scale since Israel was backed by a superpower. “Eagles” is set in the present, but it portentously references an attack on General, now President, Sisi. Anwar Sadat, who led the ’73 war but made peace with Israel five years later, was assassinated for that crime in 1981, at the very same celebration.
In “Eagles”’ case, however, President Sisi escapes unharmed as does George, by hitting the deck during the shootout and following the other elites running to a military helicopter. Once aloft, it turns out to be captained by the Minister of Defense, more on whom later, and his praetorian guard, which caught some of the rebels. The already distressed George now has to watch as they are unceremoniously shoved out the copter’s back door.
Camel market, just north of Luxor, on the bank of Nile. photo: Nicholas Blair, 1989This is all set within the reality of Cairo’s dire poverty and extreme wealth, as well as the corruption and confusion of the Arab world, which “Eagles” shows rather than tells through its sophisticated storytelling (see trailer here).
Although gay truckers’ travails are essential to understanding modern life, even more important is the current crisis of the Arab and Islamic world—even though George is a Coptic Christian. Indeed, there’s a great bit where the priest tries to get him and his separated wife to attend Church (she pleads “Covid”). Israel, although mentioned, is not central, since Egyptian suffering is self-inflicted, according to Tarik Saleh, the brilliant Egyptian-Swedish screenwriter and director of “Eagles of the Republic” (see his IMDb here).
A film and television director, as well as producer and political journalist, Saleh has an Egyptian father and Swedish mom, grew up in Sweden, and became one of its best-known graffiti artists. Cinematically, he is best known for his “Cairo Trilogy” of which “Eagles” is the last. “The Nile Hilton Incident” (2017) and “Boy from Heaven” (2022) are the first two, although all three investigate corruption and hypocrisy and star Fares Fares.
Fares, who plays George perfectly, with equal parts charisma and world-weariness, is also Swedish-Arab, although from Lebanon. A producer and director as well as actor, Fares hails from a filmmaking family and starred in a couple of features by his younger brother Josef. Going Hollywood in 2012, Fares appeared alongside Denzel Washington in “Safe House” and as a CIA officer in the Oscar-winning “Zero Dark Thirty”. Nevertheless, he is most known for his collaboration with Saleh on “The Cairo Trilogy”, which were Swedish, Danish, German and probably more, depending on the film, coproductions.
While “Eagles” lacks the introspective zoom ins, hallucinatory mis-en-scenes and raw sex of “Road”, it has great characters and lines, like when the Minister of Defense’s gorgeous, London-educated wife says, at the table of a big dinner, something like, “Egyptian men adopt self-aggrandizing conspiracy theories because they are castrated.” Then she has an affair with George, not by throwing herself at him, in the standard way of celebrity-obsessed Hollywood films, but because he seduces her with equally great lines, notably, “I am a minesweeper,” in response to her claim she is a minefield.
Sonoma Festival director Ginny Krieger and acquisitions director Carl Spence only took over a few years ago but have improved the festival's scope and excellence. photo: D. BlairAs we collapse into wars in the Middle East and Europe and political dysfunction on both the right and left, a conundrum which will surely stretch for decades, we will depend on the arts to free us from the shackles of fake news and fascist proclivities, but also identitarian politics and political correctness, so we can get back to the aggressive and honest introspection of visionary art. If the Egyptians and Mexicans can do it, surely we can, too, in the absurdly rich and free California.
And what about the other seven film I saw in my two and half days in Sonoma's cinema and culinary paradise?
• “The Art of Adventure” is a great travel and art documentary by Alison Reid, but could have used a slight edit, notably by cutting about ten minutes before her now-elderly heroes race off in their newly-restored Land Rover, while the track blasts Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again”.
• “Cielo” is a gorgeous journey into a Bolivian magical realist wonderland, by the Spanish-Brit, Alberto Sciamma, but it needed a callback of the beginning’s great graphics and symbolism to unify its mysterious end.
• This “Hamlet”, by Aneil Karia, is set among modern English Hindus and features fabulous acting and film craft but needed slower more dramatic enunciation to fully feel the meaning of the Bard’s lines (a common flaw in Shakespearian productions).
Scene from 'In the Hand of Dante' from revered New York painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel. photo: courtesy J. Schnabel• “In the Hand of Dante,” by renown New York filmmaker Julian Schnabel, started masterfully but also needed more deliberate enunciation of its Dante-esque lines.
• “Newport and the Great Folk Dream” by Robert Gordon was a great survey of that early ‘60s scene—it revealed how electric arrived with various Black groups way before Dylan—but could have used more character development.
• “Silent Friend”, by Hungarian woman director Ildikó Enyedi, is a perfect film but slow—indeed, my Sonoma friend, a filmmaker with ATHD, walked out. It is so good, in fact, it won the coveted international critics association's FIPRESCI Award in Venice. Although it has well-motivated plot development concerning the intersection of scientists and sex and only one ending—most films have three or four—it stars a tree. Hence, it really needed one salacious raw sex scene, a la “Mexican Gay Porn” film, to balance that out.
First-time director, Miles Levin (center), who happens to be from Sonoma AND an epileptic, made 'Under the Lights', an excellent indie, replete with a few Hollywood actors. photo: D. Blair • “Under the Lights” is a masterful indie by first-time Sonoma director, Miles Levin, who has epilepsy and integrated those issues beautifully into his powerful coming of age story, featuring some A-list actors. (NOTE to SIFF, if you haven’t recently shown the psychedelic, Sonoma-made masterpiece “Zen Dog”, directed and written by Rick Darge, a double feature with “Under the Lights” would be appropriate and I offer my services providing the introduction.)
As it happens, neither “Eagles of the Republic” nor “On the Road” or the other seven of the films I saw won a 2026 SIFF Award, which gave its Grand Jury Prize to the Spanish drama “Maspalomas”, about an elderly gay going back into the closet when entering a nursing home, and Best Doc to “State of Firsts” about Sarah McBride, the first trans Congressperson.
Posted on May 08, 2026 - 12:47 PM
by Doniphan Blair
Author Doniphan Blair enjoying the Sonoma Film Festival for his 15th time, in the park in front of the classic Sebastiani Theater. photo: D. Blair Although the Sonoma International Film Festival suffered setbacks a few years ago, cineSOURCE is happy to report it’s doing as good as ever—we’ve been covering it since 2010—guided by new director Ginny Krieger and film scout Carl Spence. Indeed, they’ve proved very talented at finding first-order films, which regularly sell out their venues, of which they have six around Sonoma, including the classic Sebastiani Theater.
Sure, attendees are mostly elderly and almost all White, but they’re super woke, and People of Color are welcomed, almost excessively. The thing is, true multiculturalism is about mixed incomes as well as ethnic, political and sexual orientation, so c’mon up for a fabulous vacation. At only one-hour drive from my place in West Oakland, it saves on airfare to France, and features almost as good, not-that-expensive food (plates can be had for under $20) and drink, due to the wine market’s collapse (inevitable after a 40-year boom).
The scene from the excellent Mexican film 'On the Road' signaling we are in for a wild, gay ride. photo: D. BlairI was fascinated, not only because “On the Road”—written and directed by the very talented David Pablos (see trailer here)—had stellar characters, cinematography, dramatic development and moments of reverie, but because I hitchhiked the length and breadth of Mexico in the ‘70s, rode on many trucks, and met some gays. The trucks were old-school back then, but now it’s all American-style 18 wheelers, replete with airplane-like cockpits and beds in the back for the "rendezvous amoroso."
As it happens, researchers rate Mexico as highly sexual for a Catholic country, and “On the Road” captures that in full, from the slow-burn build between the divorced trucker and his hot, coke-dealing, barely-legal hitchhiker to their visit to a truck stop, where a deluxe tracking shot shows us extensive fucking and sucking, albeit mostly heterosexual.
Note to the easily offended: “On the Road” features more full-male frontal than any commercially-shown American film I have ever seen, aside from “LA Plays Itself” (which shocked New York hipsters in 1973), hence our Mexican-gay-porn moniker. Nevertheless, “On the Road” was so well motivated and shot that Sonoma’s wokesters and Mexican Catholics, of which there are many, wouldn’t have been able to cancel it, even if they had quickly organized a protest.
Despite my dedication to Latin American queer culture, which I’ve covered from my 1984 “Gays of Nicaragua” article in The Advocate to my interview with the monumental but still unknown artist, author, anthropologist and homosexual Tobias Schneebaum, who lived with queer cannibals in the Peruvian jungle in the 1950s, I have to relegate “On the Road” to second best of the nine films I saw at the SIFF.
Fares Fares (male, center) beautifully renders a world-weary Egyptian movie star in Tarik Saleh's 'Eagles of the Republic', an Egyptian ex-pat tour de force. photo: courtesy T. SalehBeing a thriller, it includes an attempted coup d’etat at the military parade where George has reluctantly agreed to speak, to allay suspicions he opposes the military. The parade is held every October 6th to commemorate Egypt’s 1973 surprise attack on Israel. Even though the army was defeated within 19 days, that is three times the Six Day War and it was graded on a sliding scale since Israel was backed by a superpower. “Eagles” is set in the present, but it portentously references an attack on General, now President, Sisi. Anwar Sadat, who led the ’73 war but made peace with Israel five years later, was assassinated for that crime in 1981, at the very same celebration.
In “Eagles”’ case, however, President Sisi escapes unharmed as does George, by hitting the deck during the shootout and following the other elites running to a military helicopter. Once aloft, it turns out to be captained by the Minister of Defense, more on whom later, and his praetorian guard, which caught some of the rebels. The already distressed George now has to watch as they are unceremoniously shoved out the copter’s back door.
Camel market, just north of Luxor, on the bank of Nile. photo: Nicholas Blair, 1989Although gay truckers’ travails are essential to understanding modern life, even more important is the current crisis of the Arab and Islamic world—even though George is a Coptic Christian. Indeed, there’s a great bit where the priest tries to get him and his separated wife to attend Church (she pleads “Covid”). Israel, although mentioned, is not central, since Egyptian suffering is self-inflicted, according to Tarik Saleh, the brilliant Egyptian-Swedish screenwriter and director of “Eagles of the Republic” (see his IMDb here).
A film and television director, as well as producer and political journalist, Saleh has an Egyptian father and Swedish mom, grew up in Sweden, and became one of its best-known graffiti artists. Cinematically, he is best known for his “Cairo Trilogy” of which “Eagles” is the last. “The Nile Hilton Incident” (2017) and “Boy from Heaven” (2022) are the first two, although all three investigate corruption and hypocrisy and star Fares Fares.
Fares, who plays George perfectly, with equal parts charisma and world-weariness, is also Swedish-Arab, although from Lebanon. A producer and director as well as actor, Fares hails from a filmmaking family and starred in a couple of features by his younger brother Josef. Going Hollywood in 2012, Fares appeared alongside Denzel Washington in “Safe House” and as a CIA officer in the Oscar-winning “Zero Dark Thirty”. Nevertheless, he is most known for his collaboration with Saleh on “The Cairo Trilogy”, which were Swedish, Danish, German and probably more, depending on the film, coproductions.
While “Eagles” lacks the introspective zoom ins, hallucinatory mis-en-scenes and raw sex of “Road”, it has great characters and lines, like when the Minister of Defense’s gorgeous, London-educated wife says, at the table of a big dinner, something like, “Egyptian men adopt self-aggrandizing conspiracy theories because they are castrated.” Then she has an affair with George, not by throwing herself at him, in the standard way of celebrity-obsessed Hollywood films, but because he seduces her with equally great lines, notably, “I am a minesweeper,” in response to her claim she is a minefield.
Sonoma Festival director Ginny Krieger and acquisitions director Carl Spence only took over a few years ago but have improved the festival's scope and excellence. photo: D. BlairAnd what about the other seven film I saw in my two and half days in Sonoma's cinema and culinary paradise?
• “The Art of Adventure” is a great travel and art documentary by Alison Reid, but could have used a slight edit, notably by cutting about ten minutes before her now-elderly heroes race off in their newly-restored Land Rover, while the track blasts Canned Heat’s “On the Road Again”.
• “Cielo” is a gorgeous journey into a Bolivian magical realist wonderland, by the Spanish-Brit, Alberto Sciamma, but it needed a callback of the beginning’s great graphics and symbolism to unify its mysterious end.
• This “Hamlet”, by Aneil Karia, is set among modern English Hindus and features fabulous acting and film craft but needed slower more dramatic enunciation to fully feel the meaning of the Bard’s lines (a common flaw in Shakespearian productions).
Scene from 'In the Hand of Dante' from revered New York painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel. photo: courtesy J. Schnabel• “Newport and the Great Folk Dream” by Robert Gordon was a great survey of that early ‘60s scene—it revealed how electric arrived with various Black groups way before Dylan—but could have used more character development.
• “Silent Friend”, by Hungarian woman director Ildikó Enyedi, is a perfect film but slow—indeed, my Sonoma friend, a filmmaker with ATHD, walked out. It is so good, in fact, it won the coveted international critics association's FIPRESCI Award in Venice. Although it has well-motivated plot development concerning the intersection of scientists and sex and only one ending—most films have three or four—it stars a tree. Hence, it really needed one salacious raw sex scene, a la “Mexican Gay Porn” film, to balance that out.
First-time director, Miles Levin (center), who happens to be from Sonoma AND an epileptic, made 'Under the Lights', an excellent indie, replete with a few Hollywood actors. photo: D. Blair As it happens, neither “Eagles of the Republic” nor “On the Road” or the other seven of the films I saw won a 2026 SIFF Award, which gave its Grand Jury Prize to the Spanish drama “Maspalomas”, about an elderly gay going back into the closet when entering a nursing home, and Best Doc to “State of Firsts” about Sarah McBride, the first trans Congressperson.
Posted on May 08, 2026 - 12:47 PM
