Amine Benrachid arrived in France with nothing but the clothes on his back, having crossed the Mediterranean on a rubber dinghy and walked across the border on foot. Today, the Chadian-South Sudanese actor is sitting on the jury of the Citizenship Prize at Cannes, and is preparing to tell his own story on screen.
Benrachid left Chad at the age of 17, heading for Libya with Europe as his destination. After spending a year there, including four months in forced detention, he crossed the Mediterranean on a rubber dinghy bound for Italy.
Six months later, he crossed the border into France on foot and settled there.
The beginnings
He first become interested in cinema while he was training to be a teacher. It was during a visit to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra) to apply for political asylum that he had an unexpected encounter.
A photographer, struck by his face and his height, stopped him on the Paris metro and offered him a shoot. "I told him I'd never had my photo taken in my life," Benrachid recalls.
"But why not? He gave me his business card. I started doing photo shoots throughout 2019, then fashion shoots, and that's how I ended up in the film industry. I went to auditions and I'm happy with where I am today."
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It’s fair to say that his journey is one where reality and cinema overlap. Since 2020, Benrachid has been landing one role after another, such as in La Voix des autres (The Voice of Others) and Voyages en têtes étrangères (Travels Inside Foreign Heads).
In his latest film, he stars alongside Hiam Abbas in Seuls les rebelles (Only Rebels Win) by Franco-Lebanese director Danielle Arbid. He plays the role of an oppressed Sudanese worker.
The film opened the Panorama section at the Berlinale last February and is due for release in France on 24 June.
He will also be appearing in three new films soon. But that’s not all: he is keen to tell his own story, and recount his journey since leaving Chad. He has already written the screenplay and hopes to shoot it in 2027.
This article was adapted from the original in French produced by RFI Houda Ibrahim.
