Mamadou Sidibé: “A Prophet is my first casting, my very first role”

At 27, the Franco-Malian actor took his first steps on screen in the Canal + series after an unusual journey. Encounter.

Twenty years after Tahar Rahim for Jacques Audiard, a new face appears behind the bars of Un Prophète prison. At 27, Mamadou Sidibé launched his acting career on Canal +, opposite Sami Bouajila. A childhood dream? Not quite. Growing up in the Paris suburbs, Mamadou dreamed of being a professional football player. Playing at a high amateur level, he scored goals “Ousmane Dembélé style”, he likes to say. The winger is explosive, lively, impactful. Quite far from the impassive coldness that bursts the screen in the skin of the new Prophet of the encrypted channel.

“Mamadou Sidibé has a form of gentleness. We wanted that gentleness for the character. We needed someone taciturn, who we could watch without getting tired. Who managed to fascinate us with a minimum of effects, a bit of an Asian game, I would say”, summarizes Nicolas Peufaillit, co-writer and co-creator of the series.

A born actor who became an actor a little by chance. When he gave up his football career, he looked for another path and googled: “How to become an actor?” “. In the process, he landed his first casting. “Yes, Un Prophète, it was my first casting and therefore my very first role”, confides Mamadou Sidibé to Première. The Franco-Malian neo-comedian thus finds himself playing Malik, a drug smuggler, arrested after the collapse of a building in Marseille. This Mahorais discovers the little game of prison where he will have to find allies to survive.

“As in the film, deep down, the thing our two Maliks have in common, twenty years apart, is that they cannot stand being dominated in this way,” continues Nicolas Peufaillit. “Everything is a story of domination in this series. They want to free themselves from it, with their means, their intellect and a keen sense of manipulation. Malik can’t stand being considered a slave. He has been a mule since he was five or six years old. It’s obviously a reference to all these kids in drug trafficking in the cities, who are fundamentally slaves. But we don’t want to make a documentary about trafficking. Neither at the time, nor today. The real strength of Malik El Djebena is about letting others think he’s nothing, but he doesn’t forget and doesn’t forgive. He’s a veteran of survival with the head of a child.

Mamadou Sidibé perfectly embodies this duality, taking more and more space and confidence over the episodes, in a perverse tango with Sami Bouajila.

“I learned a lot from this shoot with Sami: his rigor, his seriousness, his technique. The passion he also has. I love listening to him talk.”

His elder brother, who had been Caesarized, was also full of praise for his neophyte colleague: “It was rather me who went to seek advice from him. A sharing of experience for this type of role. I was amazed by his serenity, his inner strength”, Sami Bouajila tells us. “The fire under the ice, if I may say so. He is someone very inspired and quite spiritual.”

Mamadou Sidibé’s career is now launched. He could portray the Prophet for a few years (the series is awaiting renewal). But already, cinema is calling. This year we will find him in cinemas showing Mémoire de fille, by Judith Godrèche, based on the novel by Annie Ernaux. A raw talent to follow, an actor in training who has already passed the bars with honors.