Kad Merad embodies a Nobel Prize for literature out of inspiration who returns to his hometown in Algeria in “Honorary Citizen”. A social comedy filled with tenderness which presents endearing characters, but which does not avoid some clumsiness.
honorary citizen : a softer remake than its model
After A great team, Kad Merad reunites with director Mohamed Hamidi. In honorary citizen, the actor lends his features to Samir Amin, writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature. As he crosses a big period of questioning despite this major rewardhis hometown of Sidi Mimoun offers him to be “Honorary Citizen”.
Samir accepts and returns to Algeria after many years. On the spot, he is welcomed by an old acquaintance, Miloud (Fatsah Bouyahmed), an absolute fan of his novels. This stay will prove overwhelming for the author, who will make significant encounters, reconnect with his country of birth but also with his passion.
Oulaya Amamra, Brahim Bouhlel and Zinedine Soualem complete the cast of this remake of the eponymous Argentinian film directed by Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat. Mohamed Hamidi wanted deviate from it by developing a softer toneas he explains in the press kit :
The reception of the character in the Argentinian film is very hard in this village which no longer has anything to do with the one he knew. He gets bullied and almost regrets going there. Which is no longer the case in my film. (…) It is a comedy that I would qualify as social. And the subject remains the story of a return to basics.
A beautiful chemistry between the actors
For reinforce the comic and warm side of his feature filmMohamed Hamidi called on his favorite actor Fatsah Bouyahmed, whom he has already directed in born somewhere and The cow. His complicity with Kad Merad is totally felt and constitutes one of the strengths of honorary citizen. The film also owes a lot to two of its secondary charactersperfectly interpreted by Oulaya Amamra and Brahim Bouhlel: Selma, a student who would like to make a living from her talent for rap, and Mehdi, a hotel receptionist who writes very nice texts that he is afraid to have people read.
If it reveals beautiful friendships, honorary citizen is clearly more risky when he ventures into the political arena, remaining on the surface and devoting himself to the subject only through expeditious scenes. To represent a rebellious youth and the evolution of Samir, the director was inspired by his own life, remembering “students, activists in the 80s”. He adds :
A time when people demonstrated in the streets to demand more democracy like, before the time, during the Arab Spring. This movement was very harshly repressed and this is what generated the arrival of the Islamists in the 90s. I was in high school at that time and I remember these events very well.
honorary citizen is to be discovered in cinemas from September 14, 2022.
