Acting
Mar 1, 1944
Tlemcen, Algeria
Ahmed Benaissa
Acting
Biography
Ahmed Benaïssa (in Arabic: أحمد بن عيسى), born March 2, 1944 in Algiers and died May 20, 2022 in Cannes, is a Franco-Algerian actor. As a child, Ahmed Benaïssa was fascinated by the religious festivals of Nédroma where he spent his summer holidays and at the age of 9, in Mazouna, he played in front of another kid's 9.5mm camera for 1mn30! The magic of the show leads him to make his own cinema with cardboard. He joined his father in Paris who had retreated there after his release following independence activities in Algeria. In Oise, at the college boarding school, he became a designated projectionist. In 1960-61, he was in Lyon, aged 17, and frequented the local artistic scene at the Théâtre de la Cité. There he attended the Al Capone show, directed by Planchon. It's dazzling. When Algeria gained independence in 1962, the Lyon consulate included him in an animation course for compatriots from Algeria, then returned to Algeria, to Sidi Bel Abbès, where he entered the conservatory municipal then led by Saïm El Hadj. In July 1964, on a family visit to Algiers, he convinced Bénaïssa Boudia and Mustapha Kateb to join a training course for conservatory graduates at the initiative of the TNA (Algerian National Theater). After six months of training, he was ranked first in each discipline. Its first distribution was under the leadership of Alloula in 1966/67 in Monnaies D’Or. It will be breathtaking there. The TNA sent him to an advanced training course in France, then he moved on to the International Theater Institute. In 1968, he was in the Perennetti and Jean Marie Serreau troupe touring across Europe. Bulimic, he will do café theater and cinema. In 1971, he returned to Algeria, and discovered a theater in decline, emptied of its substance and devoted to propaganda. He distanced himself after three years on stage, and headed towards cinema, then in full development in Algeria. For ten years, he appeared on the big and small screens. In 1985, he returned to the theater, then in a context of "text crisis" like the country at that time. He became a director, first of a children's theater with a superb Kalila or Dimna. In 1996, he directed the Sidi Bel Abbès Theater, then in a lethargic situation since Kateb Yacine was no longer there. He injects new blood with talented young local artists: Abbar Azzedine, Yahia Benamar, Niddal el Mellouhi and others. He will return to TNA. His most beautiful creation was El Maghara El Mounfajira in 2007 based on La Grotte Éclatée by Yamina Méchakra adapted by Haïder Benhassine. Over two decades, he put on shows where he trained comedians in the acting profession. In the cinema, in France and in Europe, we continue to call on Ahmed for his "mouth", his precision and his talent. On May 20, 2022 at 4:30 a.m., Ahmed Benaïssa died at the age of 78, in full promotion of the film Goutte d'or at the 2022 Cannes festival, of a pulmonary embolism in his sleep in a hospital in Cannes where he had been evacuated after feeling unwell. He is buried in the El-Alia cemetery in Algiers.
Feature Films (32)
Georges's life is turned upside-down when he meets Yamina and decides to help her. While she seems to be persecuted and living in hiding, Georges's reality is rooted in a daily routine without any surprises. Yamina's stories fascinate him: her happy childhood under the rhythm of a song, the massacres in the 1990s in the Great South, as well as her difficulties in Algeria and then in France. Georges spends more and more time with Yamina and is totally disorientated the day she disappears without a word. As his search for her unfolds, Georges realizes that he knows nothing about her and that every person he meets who knew Yamina seems to have a different version of the young woman's life. Convinced that he must go to Algiers to save her, Georges abandons everything and sets out on a journey without any concrete destination. His quest finally leads him to an oasis in the Sahara, a desert that spreads as widely as this love story between Bonnevoie and Tabelbala.
Arabian Nights
In the 70s, in the Goutte d'or district, three friends of Algerian origin: Poulou, a failed boxer, Amar, the clumsiest of thieves, and Jibé, a public writer for illiterate compatriots whose lives he knows in detail. As he betrays none of their secrets, he enjoys great prestige in the bistros where he works. The three of them lead a casual life, raising money by illicit means. It's only when Poulou and Amar leave that Jibé understands his isolation and marginalization. The images as well as the sounds help to reinforce the feeling that Paris is a city where he is both at home and a terrible stranger.
Étoile aux dents ou Poulou le magnifique
For more than ten years, Algeria has been living a slow war, a war without a front line but having caused more than 100,000 deaths. It is this desert that Zina and Kamel – two young Algerians, sometimes hallucinated and joyful, sometimes dejected and serene – will want to travel one last time before leaving it for elsewhere. A road movie on the territories of a city, Algiers whose construction sites are in decline. Roma wa la n'touma will show that fleeing abroad is not is not a refusal of combat, but an obscure struggle against assignment.
Rome Rather Than You
Television & Series (1)
Marzaq and his brother Zeno search for their family after spending their childhood in an orphanage following the death of their mother and the imprisonment of their father. Fate wills that they meet their younger brother Elias and also their father, who confesses that he wronged their mother and falsely accused her of her bad behavior and murdered her.
