Nadia Kaci

Nadia Kaci — Biography

Nadia Kaci (Arabic: نادية قاسي) was born in Algiers in 1970, to a mother who taught her feminism from an early age. Worried by the 1988 October Riots and the rise of Islamic nationalism, she decided to become an actress, a choice for which her father refused to speak to her for twenty years; she settled in France in 1993 and obtained French citizenship in 2015.

She drew notice in 1994 for Bab El-Oued City, directed by Merzak Allouache and awarded the International Federation of Film Critics prize at Cannes, and went on to become a familiar face of both French and Algerian cinema through films including Nationale 7 (2000), Viva Laldjérie (2004) and Délice Paloma (2007). She has continued her career with films such as I Still Hide to Smoke (2016) and Lola Pater (2017), and appeared in Papicha, which premiered at Cannes in 2019.