Adam Bessa

Bessa was born in Grasse,^[1] France in 1992,^[2] to an Italian-Tunisian mother and a Tunisian father.^[4] Bessa speaks French, Arabic, English and Italian.^[5]

Bessa decided to quit law school and pursue his long-standing passion for cinema. He bought a few books on acting and started to teach himself.^[2] He studied at Jean Périmony,^[6] a theatre school in Paris from 2011 to 2012,^[5] but he didn't like the experience.^[7] What he proposed in the exercises was too "cinematic", and he was told that he showed too little and wasn't expressive enough, so he quit and went back to Marseille to work as a real estate agent and then as a fishmonger, his other passion.^[7] Some time later, a friend asked him to star in a short film.^[7] He made his film debut in 2010 in Le Rapport Homme Femme, directed by Olivier André.^[5] In 2013, he appeared in Les Mouettes by Claire Fontecave.^[8] In 2015, he played Jason in the romantic thriller Of Sound Mind, directed by Simon G. Mueller.^[9]

In 2017, he starred as Reda in Sofia Djama's The Blessed. For his performance in the film, he was one of the young actors shortlisted to compete for the César Award for Most Promising Actor, but he did not get the nomination.^[10] Bessa kept working as a fishmonger in Marseille even after starring in The Blessed because he did not want to settle in Paris, where he didn't feel good and was wasting away.^[7] In 2019, he played police officer Kawa in the Arabic-language American war film Mosul, directed by Matthew Michael Carnahan and based on the 2016 Battle of Mosul.^[11]

In 2020, he played mercenary Yaz Kahn in the American war film Extraction, directed by Sam Hargrave.^[2] He reprised his role in the 2023 sequel, Extraction 2.^[2] In 2021, he appeared as Abbas Naziri in 5 episodes of season 3 of the Amazon Prime Video series Hanna.^[5]

In 2022, he starred in three films: Azuro directed by Matthieu Rozé;^[5] Le Prix du passage directed by Thierry Binisti;^[12] and the drama Harka directed by Lotfy Nathan, for which he won the Un Certain Regard Award for Best Performance at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival for his performance as Ali Hamdi,^[13] and was named as one of the Revelations of 2022 and pre-selected to compete for the César Award for Most Promising Actor.^[14]

Bessa will next star in Meryam Joobeur's Who Do I Belong To (Mé el Aïn), a film about a mother and daughter in an isolated Tunisian village.^[2][15]

Feature films

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Role	Director
2010	Le Rapport Homme Femme		Olivier André
2013	Les Mouettes		Claire Fontecave
2015	Of Sound Mind	Jason	Simon G. Mueller
2017	The Blessed	Reda	Sofia Djama
2019	Mosul	Kawa	Matthew Michael Carnahan
2020	Extraction	Yaz Kahn	Sam Hargrave
2021	Haute Couture	Abdel	Sylvie Ohayon
2022	Azuro	Kosta	Matthieu Rozé
	Harka	Ali Hamdi	Lotfy Nathan
	Le Prix du passage	Walid	Thierry Binisti
2023	Extraction 2	Yaz Kahn	Sam Hargrave
2024	Who Do I Belong To (Mé el Aïn)	Bilal	Meryam Joobeur
TBA	Santo Subito!	Mehmet Ali Ağca	Bertrand Bonello

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Short films

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Role	Director
2014	La Stravaganza	Louis	Vanya Chokrollahi
2015	Elles s'appellent toutes Marie	The musician	James Down

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Television

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2011	Josephine, Guardian Angel	Bilal Bouazid	TV series; 1 episode
2020	Amours solitaires	Simon	Web-series, 1 episode
2021	Hanna	Abbas Naziri	TV series, season 3, 5 episodes

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