Mohamed Hilmi

Mohamed Hilmi (in Arabic: محمد حلمي), whose real name is Mohamed Ameziane Brahimi, is an Algerian actor, director, author and singer, born on February 15, 1931 in Azeffoun, Algeria, and died in Algiers on January 5, 2022. He is the older brother of the actor Saïd Hilmi. Mohamed Hilmi attended his first show, Divide and Rule, at the age of ten, a sketch in which Hassan El-Hassani played the role of Naâma.

At the age of 13, he left his native village to go to Algiers where his doctor - he had bacillary osteitis - got him a job as a courier in an insurance company. At the same time, he took correspondence courses for three years. In 1947, he was approached for a role in the play Ould Ellil. Mahieddine Bachtarzine only gave him small roles, for this reason he joined Reda Falaki on the radio in 1949, where he wrote, among other things, a radio play for the Kabyle channel that he performed with Noureddine Meziane and Abder Isker3.

In 1950, he returned to the stage. After Algeria's independence in 1962, he wrote many sketches in songs and began directing TV films, short and medium-length films: Chkoune Yassbag, El Ghoumouk, Ec-Chitta, Matfahmine, Listihlak and especially l'Après-Pétrole (1986). In 1993, he directed his first feature film, El Ouelf Essaib, and published, at his own expense, a satirical comedy entitled Démocra-Cirque ou le cri du silence.

In the musical field, Mohamed Hilmi has signed as an author-composer, 70 songs, including about thirty humorous ones recorded for the radio and on 45 rpm records. He will publish the works De la flûte du berger aux planches sacrées, followed by Carrefour du Destin and Parcours Miraculeux then his autobiography Le Présent du passé in 2004 published by Casbah éditions.

A pioneer of Algerian radio, Mohamed Hilmi has to his credit 800 radio plays in Kabyle and Arabic, including numerous adaptations of Molière, Alexandre Dumas, Jules Renard, Plautus, William Shakespeare and The Thousand and One Nights, four operettas, 30 medium and short films and about ten musicals. He is also the author of 10 feature-length TV films.

Mohamed Hilmi died on January 5, 2022 at the age of 90 in Algiers.