Farès Landoulsi

Amongst all the Arab countries, Tunisia's film industry has been the most connected to the European film market, which makes the country's budding talent opt to spread their wings to the north to explore the international horizons of filmmaking rather than exploring new opportunities in the Arab world. Fares Landoulsi is one of the few burgeoning talents who, in a short span of time, achieved international success through international film festivals, and won rave reviews through landing in successful international co-productions. Fares rose to fame after starring in one of Netflix's most popular originals. His passion for cinema started at the age of seven, which motivated him to tirelessly spend his time aligning between his school and different classes in acting, dancing and singing. At the age of 15, Fares made his first foray into acting, taking part in the French film What the Day Owes the Night (2012). At the time, he traveled back and forth between Tunisia and France where he studied at the Institut Supérieur d'Art Dramatique (Class 2015). Later, Fares studied Drama at the Cours Florent: Drama School Paris (class 2017). Simultaneously, he took part in the Tunisian TV series School (2014) and in the short film Face à la Mer by Sabry Bouzid. In 2015, he took part in a number of Tunisian films, including: Narcisse by Sonia Chamkhi that was selected at the Cannes Film Festival and the International Festival of Carthage Days, achieving wide success in Tunisia. The year 2018 marked a milestone in Fares's career as he co-starred in the short film Omertà (2018) that took part in the Director's Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival and won him rave reviews for his astounding performance. Afterwards, he headlined the short film The Return by Charlie Kouka, to be selected by Screen International among the Arab Stars of Tomorrow for 2019, which coincided with his starring Netflix's Messiah, where his exceptional talent put him on the map among the young Arab talents with global potentials. In Messiah, Fares plays the role of a refugee who lost his family in the Syrian war and lives at the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk. To prepare for his role, Fares lost 18 Kilograms, learnt the Palestinian dialect, watched a dozen of documentaries on what life is like on refugee camps and listened to the recounting of his Palestinian friends of the survival stories of the refugees. Since 2020, Fares has landed in remarkable roles in different projects. He completed the shooting of his scenes in the upcoming film Alia, by Moroccan director Zahra Barada, in Paris. He also filmed his role in the short film Caf Road, an American production shot in Tunisia by director Ihasn Kammoun. The film is written by Charles Hall, who wrote the script for Landoulsi after watching his distinguished performance in Messiah. During the same year, Fares joined the cast of the Tunisian drama Welad El Ghoul by director Mourad Ben Cheikh that premiered in Ramadan 2021. And most recently, he joined Dhafer L'Abidine in his directorial debut film, Ghodwa, working from behind the camera filming and documenting the making of Ghodwa and its behind-the-scenes footage. He recently won the AMAG Ramadan Ceremony's "Best Male Talent" category for Awlad El Ghoul TV Series