Heaven’s Child: From Beloved Actor to Filmmaker, Behind the Scenes of Salim Kechiu’s First Play

A broken portrait of a man of a thousand faces

After years of addiction, Yazid finally sees better days as his acting career takes off. But for a man with this troubled past, whose family roots were cut too early, it is difficult to juggle his responsibilities as a father on the one hand, as a young groom on the other.

When your anxiety returns in the form of buried memories, delving into old demons is inevitable…

After becoming known to the general public in La Vie d’Adèle (the Palme d’Or in Cannes) and Abdellatif Kechiche’s diptych Mektoub, My Love, Salim Kechiche has distinguished himself on television in hits such as Lupine or Braqueurs.

Without abandoning his status as an actor, with L’Enfant du paradis he took his first step behind the camera as a director.

At the same time, the film director, screenwriter and main role, Salim Kechiuche brings the project to life so personally that it seems autobiographical. But is it really so?

“It’s my life, but at the same time, it’s not mine.”

Although she is mostly known for her acting, Salim Kechiuche Actually returning to his first love with L’Enfant du paradis: writing and directing. It’s no surprise that he chose such a personal subject for his first feature film.

The script he wrote is especially intertwined with his life and those of his loved ones… It is not autobiographical.

“The starting point was the death of one of my best friends– says the director who was also an actor. I made this story my own while distancing myself from it. I bumped it into mine, much more strongly than I first imagined, by integrating personal archives. It’s my life, but at the same time, it’s not mine.“

Highlighted by the very real scenes of Salim Kechiuş’s childhood captured on video camera, L’Enfant du paradis never ceases to question the connection to origin, be it geographical, historical or familial.

A broken figure in search of reconstruction, Yazid tries his best to avoid confronting this abandoned past, despite the questions of his companion (played by Nora Arnezeder). These questions, and even more so the lack of answers, are all connected to the same traumatic event: the death of the character’s mother.

“The death of the mother is the real theme of the filmSalim Kechiuche continues. The theme is so intimate that it becomes universal because everyone has lost someone dear to them. Everyone has experienced, directly or indirectly, this type of internal and family conflict.

It’s as if the dead returned to the film to say goodbye. Even if people don’t know it, the movie is loaded with this deadly material.“

Moving from actor status to actor-filmmaker hybrid status, blending his own existence with that of his loved ones to achieve an almost universal experience of mourning, Salim Kechioshi signs L’Enfant du paradis, the glorious first film to be discovered. In theaters from December 6.