Although he always wanted to interpret and direct cinema, almost since he was a child, he confesses that he came to the seventh art by chance. “My career has been a bit of a surprise,” says Farid Fadmi, member of the official jury in charge of awarding the honors of the official section to the competition of the XXIII City of Soria International Short Film Competition organized by the Youth Department of the City Council of the capital.
One day I was in a bar in Madrid and two people came in. “They asked me: Would you be interested in acting in a movie?” He recalls. This is how he debuted in the cinema with Fernando Colomo in ‘Lowering the Moor’ (1989). He started as an extra and in small roles, later would come ‘Poniente’ (2002), a film by Chus Gutiérrez for which he would obtain the award for Best New Actor at the Spanish Film Festival of Toulouse (France); ‘The gold of Moscow’ (2003), ‘Things that make life worthwhile’ (2004) and the great television success ‘Without tits there is no paradise’ (2008). Farid Fadmi thus opened the way for Maghrebi actors in Spanish cinema at a time when their presence was almost non-existent. Later his life became almost a movie and he felt the need to jump into directing to tell it, he relates.
Together with his friend Félix Rotaeta, he began to write the script for the film, but his death took him away from that goal. But only momentarily, because his meeting with José Luis Salcedo, editor of Pedro Almodóvar, made him continue his project, but in a shorter format. “Make a short film and I’ll ride it for you,” José Luis told me. ” He did so and won the 2011 SOS racism award for his short film ‘No soy yo’. Then he filmed ‘Khadiya’, a film “that has not been distributed”, but which together with the first one has been seen as a prelude to the projections of the African Film Series that the Soria Festival has held this week in the Mercado theaters.
From London, where he currently resides, he is looking forward to arriving in Soria and starting to share impressions with his fellow jurors (the director of ‘Wet Letters’ Paula Palacios, the also director Elena Molinero; the director of the African Film Festival of Tarifa Mane Cisneros, and the Soriano editor Alberto del Campo). Because if there are two passions that preside over his life, they are (and almost in this order): Spain, “which is in my heart”, and the cinema.
Although he still has quite a few works to watch (the members of the jury usually start the visualization of the works in competition earlier to be able to study better and substantiate their evaluations), Farid Fadmi emphasizes that he is seeing “quite good” works that he has liked a lot for its quality and its theme.
Regarding Africa being the guest continent at the Ciudad de Soria Festival in 2021, this actor born in Al Hoceima, although he considers himself, in reality, Spanish by adoption, believes that it is a good choice because in Africa there are “good stories”. Of course, he insists, “it depends on each one”, on how open or not his mind is, to let himself be ‘seduced’ by them. Unfortunately, in general, he sees Europe little interested in the seventh art that is made on the African continent. Hence the importance of promotional initiatives such as those being carried out by the City of Soria Contest in this edition.
In her case, her cinema has always had a marked social character (‘It’s not me’ is a strong argument against xenophobia, while ‘Khadiya’ tells the story of an Arab woman who works as a domestic worker) who will be present again in his next behind-the-scenes project: a short film that will begin filming next April in the United Kingdom and which will be argumentatively focused on the COVID-19 pandemic. “Now I am part of the group of actors from England,” he says. In the United Kingdom, he emphasizes, he has found greater facilities to be able to shoot his short films and, in general, greater support for artists. The only bad thing, he insists with a sense of humor, is the weather.
That is why any occasion is a good time to return to Spain and, in this sense, he really wants to finally get to know Soria. And, above all, to enjoy the Soria festival in which, this Sunday, November 14, begins (Palacio de la Audiencia Cultural Center at 8:00 p.m.) the official competition for the Celtiberian Horse of Soria.
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