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CINEMA – From the set of star Academy to that of a film shoot, there is only one step. And that, Sofia Essaïdi knows it well. This Tuesday, May 24, the former semi-finalist of the tele-hook of TF1 will be on the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival for the screening of the new feature film by Mario Martone, Nostalgiain which she holds one of the title roles.
Last of twelve films by the director of The smell of bloodwho is competing for the first time in competition, Nostalgia is the adaptation of the eponymous novel by the Italian writer and journalist Ermanno Rea, who died in September 2016.
Its story is that of a certain Felice who, after forty years of absence, decides to return to his native city, Naples. The city has changed. His memories of the past are intact. Behind this fiction hides a sensitive text on the relationship of love and hate that the writer had with the city in southern Italy.
This Tuesday is the first time that Sofia Essaïdi will climb the stairs. It is also his first big role in the cinema. On TV, no. The 37-year-old Franco-Moroccan actress, remembered by many for her duet with Beyoncé in 2003 on Crazy In Lovebegan her reconversion as an actress several years ago on the small screen.
A key TV movie
In addition to supporting appearances in films Iznogoud and mea culpathe ex-singer has been seen in several series, such as in the first season of The promise on TF1 where she portrayed the character of Sarah Castaing, the wife of a police captain in charge of an investigation into the disappearance of an 11-year-old child in the Landes.
It was in 2020. Before that, there was in particular Aishaa series of TV movies by Yamina Benguigui, but also a wave of detective programs, like Murders in Auvergne, Kepler(s), Unsuspected and The heirs.
A film, broadcast on France 2 last February, took him away from the genre. It’s called What’s wrong with my family? and tells the journey of a woman and her husband in their decision to turn to surrogacy. Adapted from the eponymous book by Marc-Olivier Fogiel, it marked the actress. “I was overwhelmed reading the script. We cried a lot during the filming, in front of and behind the camera. For me, there will be a before and an after”, she confides to the Figaro.
Like many of the emblematic candidates of the star Academy, Sofia Essaïdi answered the call for the 20th anniversary of the program in 2021. However, her singing career now seems far behind her. Musicals Cleopatra and Chicagoin which she starred in 2010 and 2018, too.
Time for the “reset”
What she dreamed of, however, was a second solo album. But then, things didn’t go as planned. In the columns of Tele-Leisure in 2018, she says she felt like she was taken “for a product”. He would never have been given the opportunity to express himself, musically speaking. This experience was painful and that’s why she decided to put an end to it, with the idea of “making a change and a rethinking”.
It’s a rash decision, but it’s starting to pay off. His future projects can attest to this. Sofia Essaïdi is in the casting, in 2022, of female fighters alongside Audrey Fleurot, Julie de Bona and Camille Lou. The French series, in which she plays the role of a woman whose factory owner husband went to the front in 1914, is eagerly awaited.
On the cinema side, we must see her in Olivier Marchal’s new big-budget film (36 Quai des Goldsmiths) for Amazon Prime. The film does not yet have an online date on the platform, but suggests that it will not be the last of Sofia Essaïdi. She put away the microphone, but did not abandon the cameras.
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