Cannes Breakthrough: Introducing Tahar Rahim

Tahar Rahim in Jacques Audiard’s “The Prophet.”

“I had to create somebody totally different and it was extremely difficult,” Rahim explained, via a translator, yesterday here in Cannes, “I had to make up the role.” The physically challenging performance forced him to work hard to create the role. “I studied,” Rahim added, “I studied documentaries and various films about prisons and the prison environment.”

”[He’s] naive in a way,” Audiard explained, during a translated press conference. “Almost a virgin, who utlimtlatey builds up his identity within his commmunity. “He’s got no background, he is homeless. And at the end, he’s got a story and an identity and a home to go to.”

Rahim studied cinema in Montpelier, ultimately deciding that what he really wanted to do was act, so he moved to Paris to study the craft. While he has very few credits, one was on a series written by one of the film’s co-writers, Abdel Raouf Dafri. Jacques Audiard met the younger actor rather randomly in the back of a car while Rahim was working with another friend and the director quickly realized that the actor would be perfect for the lead role in his new film.

After studying and experimenting to create the charater, Rahim said he was given tremendous freedom and learned a great deal from Audiard and co-star Niels Arestrup, who played his mob mentor in the movie. Audiard explained that he worked with Rahim to create a different sort of mafia character. Not a “Scarface” figure, but rather a new type who more angelic than psychopathic.

“I locked myself up,” Rahim explained on Saturday. “I imprisoned myself in an idea, as it were, [and] found it difficult to figure out what I was doing.”

“Then the puzzle came together,” he concluded. “And I no longer thought about the character.”