Hafsia Herzi

Hafsia Herzi — Biography

Hafsia Herzi is a French actress, screenwriter and director born on January 25, 1987, in Manosque, the youngest of four children born to a Tunisian father and an Algerian mother. After her parents divorced, her father remarried in Algeria while she grew up with her mother in Marseille.

She entered cinema in Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain (2007), a debut that won her the Marcello Mastroianni Award at Venice and, the following year, the César for most promising actress. She went on to appear in House of Tolerance (2011), On My Way (2013) and The Marchers (2013), starred in Sex Doll in 2016, and took roles beyond French cinema in the American independent films War Story and This Teacher.

She moved into directing in 2019 with You Deserve a Lover, and her second feature, Good Mother, competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Ensemble Prize. The year 2025 was a double milestone: her third feature, La Petite Dernière, screened at Cannes, while her performance in Stéphane Demoustier's Borgo won her the César for Best Actress.