Adam Bessa, star of Harka, is building a diverse career

The camera loves Adam Bessa, and not only for his boyish good looks. The star of critically acclaimed Tunisian drama Harka is an actor with astonishing range.

Adam Bessa’s film Harka, screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival

Adam Bessa may well be the next big thing. The handsome 30-year-old French-Tunisian actor’s range is astounding. He is on screens as a couturier’s assistant in Haute Couture, he’s the love interest in the third series of Hanna, and for a second time the fluent English speaker appears alongside Chris Hemsworth in the sequel to the hit Netflix film, Extraction.

We are meeting to discuss Bessa’s starring role in Harka, for which he won best actor at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section. Many critics thought the film was so good that it should have been in the main competition. The France-Germany-US-Tunisia co-production will have its Australian premiere at the Melbourne International Film Festival next month.

Written and directed by Egyptian-American Lotfy Nathan, Harka is the first film to be shot in Sidi Bouzid, the birthplace of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi, whose 2010 self-immolation – a protest against the confiscation of his wares and harassment by local authorities – sparked the Tunisian Revolution. It ignited similar protests against autocratic regimes throughout the Arab world, a movement that became known as the Arab Spring.

“Harka is not really the story of this guy, but that’s the basis that interested Lotfy in the beginning,” Bessa says in Cannes. “Then it evolved and became more contemporary. It became more about a generation of young Tunisians who are having a similar life.”

Harka follows Ali, a young man who sells petrol on the streets. Following his father’s death, he must care for his young sisters and he becomes involved in transporting petrol from the desert, a dangerous and illegal activity. The film reflects the difficult economy of the country, where the poor struggle to make ends meet and how, in many ways, the revolution has failed.

Does Bessa have family and friends who are struggling there? “Yes, my cousins and my friends,” he says. “My family comes from a tiny place like Ali.”

Bessa has two children with his French musician wife, his “soulmate”. Family ties are strong in Ali’s world, too, as he struggles to support his sisters as their home is about to be taken from them.

“The sibling relationship is very different from the one you have with your kids,” he says. “But having kids opens your heart. If your heart is a little tight, it helps you find compassion. It bonds you again with these kinds of feelings. Sometimes you can feel trapped in yourself, a little bit selfish, and Ali has to escape that too.”

The son of an Italian-Tunisian mother and a Tunisian father, Bessa was born in Marseilles in France but has spent considerable time in Tunisia, which he also considers home. “My mother carries Tunisia with her. Every time you step in the door you feel like you are in Tunisia.”

Untrained as an actor, Bessa worked different jobs and was a fisherman when he fell into acting. His astounding ability to conjure Ali’s frustration is instinctive.

A scene from Harka

“Going to acting school didn’t work for me, but every actor is different,” he says. “The guy I admire a lot is Gary Oldman and he’s been to acting school.”

His break in France came in 2017’s The Blessed for which he won for best newcomer in the Cesar awards and where he first appeared alongside Lyna Khoudri (Haute Couture). Set in Algiers, The Blessed follows a group of people in the wake of the Algerian War. Internationally, Bessa became known when he co-starred in the Netflix action film Mosul which, like the Extraction films, was produced by Joe and Anthony Russo (also behind several Marvel hits including Avengers: Endgame).

Bessa played an Iraqi-Kurdish policeman who joins a SWAT team during the ISIS occupation of Mosul. On his first day he witnesses the rescue of a child, the death of several colleagues, takes revenge on his betraying police partner and participates in the ambush of an ISIS stronghold. The Russo brothers hired him again for Extraction in which he plays Yaz alongside Hemsworth’s ace mercenary Tyler Rake. Bessa had completed the sequel shortly before we spoke in Cannes.

“It’s another challenge doing a big movie like this because you’re thrown into territory where the pressure is huge,” he says.

“It’s something I’ve really enjoyed doing. You can try new things and I’ve learned so much in the process. It’s more physical, it’s like dancing. You do ballet and then you do jazz. The street life is something that I’m pretty comfortable with.”

Bessa and Lyna Khoudri in Haute Couture. Picture: Roger Do Minh

Bessa enjoyed working with Hemsworth and in many ways found a kindred spirit in the actor.

“Chris is a very, very lovely guy,” he says.

“He’s down to earth and he’s a family man. He’s very committed to his craft and has been working in the scale of, you know, craziness, for a long time.

“From the beginning he was welcoming and mentored me into this world. We have many scenes together in the second film as I am the co-lead and it’s even bigger. So we had to work hand-in-hand.

“I met all his teams and it’s another world. As a movie star he’s surrounded by so many people. They kept a distance in the beginning and allowed time before I could enter.”

Filmed across six months in the Czech Republic and Austria, the film is set in Georgia (the country) and Vienna. It was meant to be shot in Sydney late last year but then the Covid wave hit. “Everything was prepared. I was already looking at going there with my family,” Bessa says.

What was the hardest thing he had to do? “Fight the MMA (mixed martial arts) world champion, Australia’s Megan Anderson,” he says. “They trained me for four months to be able to fight her. I tried to take up the challenge. Then I was jumping out of a train, getting shot at 2m, having a car explode just next to me – I had to run for it to avoid it crushing me. It was the first day of the shoot and it set the tone.”

How did he feel standing next to the towering Hemsworth and Anderson? “Yes, I’m very small,” Bessa says. “Chris’s arm is probably the size of my two thighs! He’s really big. My character is always teasing him, so that’s really funny. I play a multi-millionaire weapons dealer – we actually don’t really know what I do – and I organise missions for him. But, you know, he doesn’t want to mess with me. He might kill me with a punch but he’d rather not because I might blow him up or his car might explode and you don’t know why. You have to be careful with the tiny ones, they’re sneaky,” he adds, grinning.

There’s no doubting that the camera loves Bessa, and not only for his boyish good looks. The lad can act.

“Every physical aspect has its strength and weakness,” he says. “As an audience member, when I’m watching a film, I feel that broken faces are beautiful. People talk about beauty, but I never see that because I always look at a character’s strength. We’re all animals and depending on the shape you have you develop certain things. Being tiny, I’ve developed a few things.”

Comparisons might be made with French-Algerian actor Tahar Rahim, who has appeared in French and Arab stories and American productions such as The Mandalorian, Netflix’s The Serpent and the Australian-co-production Mary Magdalene, and who has an upcoming role alongside Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s Kitbag, about Napoleon Bona­parte’s origins.

“No, I’m Adam Bessa, he’s Tahar Rahim,” Bessa says. “But he’s taught me a lot and I love him very much. He’s one of the first guys I identified with on screen, so he had a tremendous importance for me. I was still a kid when I saw A Prophet and I followed every film of his after that because I identified so much with his style.

Bessa at the Cannes film festival. Picture: Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

“It’s maybe like (Robert) De Niro and (Al) Pacino for Italian-Americans. When they arrived, they carried with them their backgrounds, their traditions, their multicultural aspects. De Niro arrived after Pacino, so would you have said to De Niro that he was the next Al Pacino? No, he’s just another one. Another very good one.”

Bessa is another very good actor too. Watch this face.

Harka screens on August 8 and 13 at the Melbourne International Film Festival.