DUBAI: French Algerian actress Lyna Khoudri is at the Cannes Film Festival to promote her latest project, “In Waves.”
The actress attended a screening of the film before she headed to a red carpet event for “Fatherland,” by director Pawel Pawlikowski. The film “centers on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika, actress, writer and rally driver. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a challenging and emotional road trip in a black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins,” according to the logline.
Meanwhile, “In Waves” director Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated adaptation of AJ Dungo’s graphic novel opened the 65th Cannes Critics’ Week. The film’s French-language version, which screened alongside the English feature, features voice work by Khoudri.
Cannes Critics’ Week is a sidebar that runs alongside the main Cannes festival from May 13-21.
“In Waves” is one of 11 features that is running in the section.
Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu head up the voice cast for the English-language version, while Khoudri, Rio Vega, Paul Kirscher and Biran Ba can be heard in the French take.
Inspired by Dungo’s real-life love story, the film is set in California and follows a skateboarder and a surfer who find their relationship tested by illness.
Khoudri, 33, first rose to prominence in her role as Nedjma in Mounia Meddour’s critically acclaimed drama “Papicha.” For her work in the film, she won the Orizzonti Award for best actress at the 74th Venice Film Festival, and she was nominated in the Cesar Awards’ most promising actress category.
Khoudri also starred in the 2019 mini-series “Les Sauvages” and in 2016’s “Blood on the Docks.”
She was also cast in Wes Anderson’s 2021 comedy “The French Dispatch” alongside Timothee Chalamet, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Owen Wilson.
The actress also stars in Martin Bourboulon’s Afghanistan evacuation drama “In the Hell of Kabul: 13 Days, 13 Nights,” alongside Danish Bafta-winning “Borgen” star Sidse Babett Knudsen, Roschdy Zem (“Chocolat,” “Oh Mercy!”) and theater actor Christophe Montenez.
