"Ibrahim," a feature film by French-Algerian director Samir Guesmi has won four awards at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival including the Best Film and Best Direction awards.
The movie's plot centers on Ibrahim, a young man who tries to regain his father's trust after he made some bad friendships which embarrassed his migrant conservative father.
The festival, which finished its shows on Wednesday at the city of Angoulême, was among the most awaited cinema events in France, especially after the cancelation of the Cannes Festival because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
The event offered a great opportunity to bring together French cinema figures after months of separation and postponement. Reporters who covered the opening and closing ceremonies had to recognize the actors and actresses from behind face masks that hid their features, but the blue eyes of actress Isabelle Adjani were charming enough to reveal her identity.
She partook in the festival as the star of "Soeur" (sisters), a movie directed by Yamina Benguigui. In the film, Adjani's character almost depicts her own story. She plays the role of Zahra, an Algerian theater actress whose childhood struggles are provoked after she meets Riyad, her brother who went with their father to France 30 years ago after their parents' divorce.
The festival screened 60 movies from France and other French-speaking countries including Belgium, Morocco, and Algeria. The 13th edition of the event attracted 23,000 spectators despite the coronavirus fears.
Samir Guesmi started his career as an actor before working in direction and scriptwriting. He is one of many Moroccan migrants of the second generation who succeeded in France. Guesmi was raised in a family of eights brothers and sisters. His father was a construction worker and his mother was a servant in a nursery.
He wasn't a brilliant student at school, but his fondness of theater was his passport to a profession that exposed his artistic talents, which he enhanced by joining the Studio Pygmalion, and then Tanya Balashova's Theatre School. After many roles on stage, Guesmi found his way to the big screen, and won many prizes including the best actor award at the Amiens International Film Festival for his part in "Malik le maudit".
