Quotes

"Until I met Abdel (director Abdellatif Kechiche), I had only done a few extras. I could see that he had confidence in me, but I wondered why he chose me when I don't know how to act, when I haven't taken any courses... In retrospect, even though I am aware of the work I did, I keep asking myself: why me?

About the final scene of the oriental dance: ""It was hard: for my first film I had to gain weight, I did it because I had someone in front of me who had 100% confidence in me. I had to change physically and dance. I was really scared of that scene. I knew it was an important scene and I had worked so hard on it that I had to do it right. It was very hard physically but strangely enough I was able to last more than 45 minutes every time. Even professional dancers told me, it's a crazy thing to do because a dancer dances for a maximum of one hour. But I was carried by the energy and by the character. After the shooting I slept for a week!"

In tears as she receives her award for acting in Venice, she says: "An important prize, recognition of all the efforts I made for this film. The future? I don't know, I'm still in turmoil. Later she says about the two years before receiving the award: "During the auditions, no one wanted to believe that I had played a leading role in a feature film. I even felt contempt. But I have a positive rage inside me. I learned that you have to fight to get what you want."

[press conference for The Little Sister (2025) at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival] I read the novel which I absolutely loved, I was overwhelmed by the story and the characters. And then of course I met Fatima [Fatima Daas] on Zoom to validate things. We didn't discuss matters all that much but there was a connection. We met some time afterwards but we didn't talk overly much, because neither of us is very talkative but we got along very well and understood each other. We both respect each other. In the first version of the script, things were very freely adapted. I produced a couple of versions in fact. I wanted Fatima to read through them. There were no contractual obligations but for me it was very important that she be involved. Without the novel there would have been no film at all today and it's important for me that she agreed, that she was willing to validate this very intimate subject. I sent her several versions - I harassed her a bit because sometimes she didn't get back to me! And then I shared things with her and sent her photographs of the casting and the people I was thinking of.