Adam Bessa, another great performance
Present at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where in 2022 it won the Male Actor Award in the Un certain Regard section with his interpretation in HarkaAdam Bessa wears this time The ghosts, opening film of Critics’ Week. A new film in which he tackles a new story of the Arab world, inspired by terrible events that actually happened: the pursuit of Syrian war criminals by a clandestine cell of Syrian citizens deployed in Europe.
Adam Bessa plays Hamid, a young man who was tortured in Saidnaya prison and who lost his wife and daughter in the Syrian civil war. Launched in the footsteps of his torturer, whom he has never seen but whose smell and voice he retains memories of, Hamid will experience a personal journey as frightening as it is captivating.
We met him and he took us behind the scenes of The ghostsespecially for the climax of the film, the meeting with his torturer, Harfaz, who is unaware of Hamid’s identity and mission. A 12-minute dialogue sequence, of monumental tension, where the actor Tawfeek Barhom plays alongside Adam Bessa an exceptional performancefull of surprising tension and terror.
Cannes 2024: We saw a thrilling (and terrifying) spy thriller
How did your meeting with Tawfeek Barhom go? The ghostsand how did you work together on the canteen scene?
Adam Bessa : We matched a lot, it was a real meeting. Tawfeek stepped out of Terrence Malik’s film and into a world of free creation. It’s been a long time since I had a meeting like this, a friendship was born. I immediately had faith in the artist in front of me. In understanding the scenario, in what he wanted to do. We played a lot of backgammon, we shared some ideas about the film, but we didn’t talk about it much, we told each other a lot of stories from our personal lives. We let ourselves play, we let ourselves be surprised and we got very close.
This confrontation scene in “The Ghosts” was unrehearsed. Sometimes I corrected him in French, because it was something completely new to him. I told Jonathan: “I think two takes will be enough, don’t get tired, I think we will have everything in these takes.” In the end we had to make three, two and a master shot, and it was nice. We wanted to reach this level of intensity, we knew it, we told ourselves that we had to show what was in our stomach.
And for everything we heard, especially about the Palestinians, we were accused, I was filled with anger. It had to be good! The topic is so close to my heart that it was necessary to convey the importance, the strength of what we can feel in these moments. It wasn’t an overview, the viewer had to be able to feel how crazy it is to have this experience.
Source: Cine Serie
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