"Noces" is the film that our era needed. The urgent and measured response to the obscurantism that threatens our societies and reduces women to silence. Inspired by a tragic incident, this dramatic drama portrays a Latvian-Pakistani high school student forced to marry by her family, while she would like to live and love in freedom. To portray this teenage character in rebellion, Brussels filmmaker Stephan Streker led a long casting before falling on the good actress, his "diamond raw": Lina El Arabi.

At the age of only 21, this Parisienne with amber skin and low voice takes up the challenge with a palpable intensity and emotion, signing there an atypical performance in the French cinematographic landscape. "I was crying every day on this shoot," she says. It was hard, trying, but the most important thing for me was not to judge these characters. I wanted to grasp the motives of each one, the clash between the traditions and the desires of emancipation of a young woman. "

Lina El Arabi is a descendant of a progressive family from Morocco, with a strong focus on the arts (mother, pharmacist, initiates art and essay films and classics such as Alfred Hitchcock's films) from childhood in comedy, first at the Conservatoire de quartier, and then during a short course at Cours Florent. She discovers a second nature: more cash, less reserved, open to the world.

In February 2016, she is noticed in the TV movie Ne m'abandonne pas by Xavier Durringer, where she plays a radicalized French woman who wants to join Syria. Still a subversive subject. "My parents tried to dissuade me from accepting the fi lm," she recalls. The Paris attacks were in the minds, they thought it was risky. But it's okay, I know how to defend myself. "

When so many other actresses run after the success, Lina El Arabi decided to favor the projects that tell the state of the world, the rise of the fanaticism, the oppression of the women. Modest and inflamed, she refuses to be caught up in the sirens of the cinema and continues her studies in the third year of school of journalism, where she sharpens its gaze on the actuality. His goal ? To make documentaries "in the vein of Striptease". It is not difficult to imagine that Lina El Arabi will soon talk about her again. In front of or behind the camera.

"Noces" by Stephan Streker, with Sébastien Houbani, released on February 22nd.