The power games of Salim Kechiouche | Financial Times

Heartthrob, drug lord, refugee, Latin lover, gangster, pick-up artist, murder victim, gigolo… The CV of the French-Algerian actor Salim Kechiouche reads like an industrious patchwork of experiences. Though he has the mischievous good looks of a leading man—an intense gaze framed by a bushy brow, softened by an easy smile—he’s rarely taken on a romantic role. Or not one that could guarantee a happy ending.

“I want something more stimulating every time: I look for excitement, thrills and intensity,” he says when we meet in Paris, the actor dressed in a sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers with close-cropped dark hair. The 44-year-old resident of northwest Paris has just returned from three months in Algeria to shoot his first Arabic-language film, Like a Lézard Sur le Mur, by director Mohamed Lakhdar Tati, which tells the story of a director (Kechiouche) who is introduced to the world of smuggling. It follows in the wake of his appearance as an electrifying drug lord in Netflix’s global hit Ganglands, the second series of which was released in February. This summer sees him star in the final part of director Abdellatif Kechiche’s trilogy, Mektub, my love, where he plays a restless Don Juan. Every time Kechiouche shows an innate and muscular physicality, a quality confirmed by Antoni Ciufo, who photographed him for HTSI extension. “There has been a lot of discussion about action and movement,” Ciufo says. “Salim was ready for it: patient and playful.”

I really loved boxing: the danger, the adrenaline and the skill

A certain degree of escapism has always appealed to Kechiouche, who grew up in the harsh suburbs of Lyon; although theater and cinema were not part of his family culture, box office hits such as Rocky hitting an exposed nerve. “It was so inspiring,” she says, “not just the performance, but the idea that you can come from nothing and be successful.” His first introduction to image and storytelling was particularly poignant: when he was 14, his mother died; Kechiouche’s father had bought a video camera so they could capture family moments on film. Kechiouche was then transferred from the private school his mother had insisted he attend to a local public school. He started boxing, both as a means of liberation and for self-defense. “I felt I had to learn it out of necessity, but then I really liked it: I liked the danger, the adrenaline and the skill.” He would eventually build his film career alongside a stint as a professional boxer, winning kickboxing champion titles in both 1998 and 2002. He didn’t make it famous but, he points out, “there’s a performance element to it.” “.

Kechiouche has also worked several times with Abdellatif Kechiche: first in the Palme d’Or Blue is the warmest color, and then in Kechiche’s Mektoub trilogy. Set in the early 1990s in the seaside resort of Sète, Mektoub, My Love: Canto One (released 2017) captures a languid and heady summer season marked by romantic hookups between a group of young locals and vacationers. The second part, Interlude, which premiered at Cannes in 2019, but was ultimately held back from public release when a particularly long sexual act in the film caused an uproar. This year will finally see the premiere of the third chapter of the film: Singing Two. While the director has sometimes drawn controversy for his methods, Kechiouche has no problem working with him. “It gives the actors a lot of freedom,” he says, adding, “I never watch the cut before it’s released.”

Kechiouche enjoys being part of Algerian projects – his heritage is important to him. “It’s not that you’re French or Algerian: you’re both. You can’t choose. It’s like saying you choose between your mother and your father. For his next role, he travels to Morocco to film a new Amazon Prime series, Ourikawhere his drug dealer goes head-to-head with a police officer during the 2005 Paris riots. But he also recently fulfilled his longtime directorial ambitions with his feature debut, L’enfant du Paradis. Shot around the Place de Clichy, it follows the last day in the life of a self-destructive but promising young actor. Kechiouche plays the lead role, loosely based on a close friend who died in a scooter accident in 2009.

“We had a lot in common,” she says. “He too came from a poor, working-class background and also lost his mother.” In place of the director, he made the very first footage he shot as a teenager during his mother’s last days. They were used to illustrate flashbacks of the protagonist’s loss. “It’s a tribute to my friend and my mother,” he says of the film. “But it’s also about how we successfully change our place in the world and keep our feet on the ground.”

Talent, Salim Kechiouche to the Elite. Hair, Alexander Soltermann at home. Makeup, Ruben Masoliver by Walter Schupfer. Photographer’s assistant, Vassili Boclé. Digital operator, Sarah Reimann. The stylist’s assistants, Aylin Bayhan and Elsa Durousseau. Production, Jason le Berre at home