RADOUAN LEFLAHI - "UNKNOWN"
About our interviews: we don’t ask questions, we listen to stories.
Interview and photographs: Andrei Runcanu @andreiruncanu
Radouan Leflahi is an actor based in France. He studied acting at the Regional Conservatory of Rouen in Normandy. After his graduation he starred in several productions of French director David Bobée: Romeo & Juliet, Lucrezia Borgia, Fairies, Peer Gynt. He toured in France and several other countries. He made his TV debut with the series Aux animaux la guerre and his cinema debut with movies La République and Romeo & Juliet. He collaborated with France based Romanian director Eugen Jebeleanu for two productions: Ogres and Itinéraires. He is currently in rehearsals for the production of Elephant man, starring Béatrice Dalle.
Radouan Leflahi links: Instagram / Actor profile
“I built a house for my mother” says Radouan as he starts telling me a story about Moroccan winters. I saw him live in two productions, Ogres and Itinéraires and his presence on stage is very powerful. He’s the kind of actor that fills the whole stage with his energy, but I still laughed when he told me that he built a house.
We started the interview by mourning the gone hot summer days and complaining about the winter to come. He lives in Normandy, where it’s already cold and where winter is hard, but in Morocco, in the Atlas Mountains, where his mother was born and lives, he says it’s unbearable. So hard that his mother will come to live with him in France until spring. He tells me about how, one time during winter in Morocco, he was sleeping in the same room with his mother, his uncle and his cousin because it was the only room with a fire, and they still had to cover themselves with three thick blankets. Then he goes on telling me about the house he built. “I think I was 24. And my mother didn’t have a house, she was living in the house of my grandfather. When I was young I always said to my mother that when I will be an adult, a man, I would do something big for her, like buy a car and a house for her. And when I started being an actor and had some money, it was like the beginning of everything for me, the beginning of the dream. So I made plans for a house. Of course I didn’t build it myself. We met a guy who was supposed to build it, but he was a fraud and we lost a lot of money. It was hard, really hard. In the end, the construction took five years. It’s crazy in the middle of the Atlas Mountains, they cannot work in winter because it’s cold and we have a lot of snow, they cannot work during the Ramadan because it’s one month of Ramadan, they cannot work when there are big Islamic festive days and sometimes they don’t work because they don’t want to. But it’s nice now, sentimentally I mean, we have our own home in the village, the village of my mother. When she was young, in this village there was nothing, people lived in caverns in the mountain, and now she has her own home.”
Radouan was born in France. His mother came to study in France and that’s where she met his father, also Moroccan. He never knew his father, as he left when he was born. His mother loved France and always considered herself a French citizen, even though she never got the citizenship. He grew up in Saint Etienne du Rouvray, a neighbourhood in the outskirts of Rouen. “We had a forest nearby, so I grew up in this forest. I knew it was something like a privilege: <<I have a forest for myself. After school I can go to the forest and build a small house for me, a small home, like a cabin, with friends>>. It was the beginning of the imagination of everything for me. As an actor, you know. Like, I want to build a house but I just have a hammer and two dirty little nails. How will I do it? But at the same time it was hard, because we realised quickly that we are not like the other one, that we have a different place in society. We were mostly immigrants, but we didn’t have thoughts like <<he’s a white one, I’m an Arab, he’s a black one, we are not the same>>. No, we thought everyone was the same, we just wanted to play soccer. That’s all we wanted. But when you grow up, at some point you have to face reality: we are the same, we grew up in the same neighbourhood, but when you are in front of the cops or the teachers or the people in the street, you are not the same”. As I’m watching him becoming passionate about his place in society I keep going back to that image of him building that little house in the forest. And then I realise that when we took the pictures for the interview, a few months ago, he came to my studio where the whole building was being renovated. And there was this scaffold that you could walk on from the balcony. Coincidentally or not, that’s where we chose to take the pictures.
He used to stay until late in the forest when he was little and one of his two older sisters would always come to fetch him after dark and then protect him from their angry mother. He smiles and laughs as he tells me stories from his childhood. “One time”, he tells me, “when I was in kindergarten, I was maybe 5 years old, I was on the floor waiting for the end of the break, and a girl, a little girl, came and sat next to me and she asked me, really, I swear, she asked me <<do you want to be my boyfriend>>? <<Ok>>, I said, it was the first time for me. I remember all the names. The first one was Mathilde Neveu. The second one, Clementine, sat next to me and the first one and she asked me <<do you want to be my boyfriend>>? and I was like <<Erm, erm… ok, I can be your boyfriend>>”. He laughs as he keeps on going. “I swear, it’s not finished. Another one came, Clemence, and she asked me <<do you want to be my boyfriend>>? <<Erm, ok, ok, I can be your boyfriend>>. And I went home and I told my mother <<Mama, I have to tell you something, I have girlfriends>>. <<What do you mean you have girlfriends>>? <<I have girlfriends. I have eight lovers in my class>>.
For Radouan being an actor means “being recognised, being someone”, a sort of identity that he can have in front of his family, friends and society. He subtly paints this imaginary picture of his father reading a newspaper somewhere about his son becoming an actor. And then he tells me something that seems the exact opposite to his desire of becoming an actor. “Since I was young I always though about the fantasy of being unknown. To go and live in a place where no one knows you, no one knows your story, your family, nothing. It’s like you are reborn”. His dream seems to shift back and forth from being a well known actor to being an unknown person. But there is a higher purpose in this confusing shift. And I slowly begin to understand where this recurring obsession with building houses comes from as he lays out his fantasy. “Sometimes I dream about being an interior designer in Montreal or in Chicago. I imagine living alone in a big loft, I love this cliche of these lofts from North America. I have just three or four friends in this city. Not more, I don’t need more. And I’m starting to be a famous interior designer in the city, all the celebrities know me, I decorate their homes. And then I will buy another loft in the building for my family. And they can come whenever they want. And I can say to my mother <<Ok, now I’m in Montreal, I have my loft, I have another one, you can come and live in Montreal if you want. Because I know that it was hard for you to live in France, so now you can come, it’s easier to live here”.
