Rabat – French-Moroccan actor and filmmaker Roschdy Zem walked away with the best actor award, at the 45th Cesar ceremony. The ceremony took place on February 29th in Paris.
Zem won the best actor award for his role in the French film “Roubaix, une lumière,” playing the role of a police detective.
The film tells the story of a police chief investigating the death of an old woman on Christmas night in the north of France.
In an interview after the ceremony Zem told the press “You know I’ve been watching the Cesar awards since I was a kid, I’ve been nominated few times, then I told myself that it’s not for me, and I accepted it, but the day when it happened to me, it’s a real moment of emotion.”
“I’m very happy,” added the actor.
“I was happy even before because the actual recognition is the hard work after all,” Zem said.
Arnaud Desplechin, director of the film said that he saw in Zem “a lord that grows from one film to another,” and a “very modest man”
Meanwhile, the French Press Agency said that the role he played was “perfect for him.”
Read also: Papicha: Banned Film in Algeria Wins Two Cesar Awards
Zem has been nominated a total of five times to the Cesar award, three nominations were for the best actor category, one for best director and another for best-adapted screenplay.
The French-Moroccan filmmaker’s nominations for Best Original screenplay in 2012 was for his film “Omar Killed Me,” a film that tells the true story of a Moroccan gardener whose name is Omar Raddad, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison in France after being accused of killing his French boss.
Raddad’s case became a controversy in France when a DNA test revealed that DNA found at the crime scene did not match the convict’s and that the whole trial was a setup.
The French-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski won the award for best director for “An Officer and a Spy,” a film that tells the story of the notorious 19th century Dreyfus affair.
The plot follows the life of a French Jewish soldier who was accused of treason during the occupation of Alsace by the Germans and later became involved in a political scandal about antisemitism.
Polanski, who faces five charges including rape and pedophilia in the US, did not attend the ceremony.
Several actors walked out of the ceremony when Polanski’s name was announced, including French actress Adèle Hanael who shouted “Shame!” as she left.
