For actor Kad Merad, “the film has a political tone, through the prism of comedy”
The return to Algeria of a child of the country who has succeeded: French actor Kad Merad confides to AFP that he was touched by his role tinged with “a very personal resonance” in Citizen of honor , a sour comedy soft in theaters in France on Wednesday.
Born in 1964 in Sidi Bel Abbès to a mother from Berry and an Algerian father, Kad Merad – his real name Kaddour Merad – only lived in Algeria for two years before his parents settled permanently in France.
In Citoyen d’honneur , he plays a French writer of Algerian origin who won the Nobel Prize. In loss of inspiration, he accepts the invitation of his native village.
A contrasting homecoming: beyond the honours, some come to hold him to account under pressure from local Islamists, while the film shows a country plagued by political difficulties and censorship, with a freedom-loving youth.
Citizen of Honor is the remake of an Argentinian film, El Ciudadano ilustre by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat, released in 2017 in France.
“A very personal resonance”
“Many things touched me because there is necessarily a very personal resonance,” says Kad Merad. “I was born in Algeria. I do not claim myself as an Algerian, but as a Frenchman with roots”.
“My parents settled in Algeria two years before I was born, but came back to France because a Franco-Algerian couple was complicated…”, adds the actor.
“The film has a political tone, through the prism of comedy. We could not avoid showing the demonstrations of the youth. Relations between France and Algeria are very particular, complicated… I really hope that serenity will finally settle in…”, confides Kad Merad who took part in the official trip to Algeria by French President François Hollande in 2012.
“President [Emmanuel] Macron invited me in turn a fortnight ago, but I was filming abroad,” he specifies.
Mohamed Hamidi, the director of Citoyen d’honneur [shot in Morocco ], wanted to “show Algeria with all its riches, its hopes but also its faults: an authoritarian power and a youth that is not heard”.
“In Algeria, even if some foreign films and series are starting to be filmed there, it’s not yet easy,” the director told Allo Ciné . He confided that he feared that he would not be authorized to shoot such a scenario there, which tackles “today’s Algeria with all its complexity”.
