Acting

Sid Ali Kouiret

Sid Ali Kouiret (Arabic: سيد علي كويرات‎) is an Algerian actor, born January 3, 1933 in Algiers, Algeria and died April 5, 2015 in the same city. Sid Ali Kouiret had a difficult childhood; his father, a taxi driver, often came home drunk and was violent with his mother. One day, the kid, exasperated, takes a knife and sticks it in his father's back. He thus found himself in the streets of Algiers, left school, lived on petty thefts, and, from the age of 9, took on odd jobs as a shoeshine boy, working for the port fishermen. At 17, he was a pimp at the port, and as he liked to swim, to go to the Algiers mole, he had to cross Rue de la Marine. One fine day he met Mustapha Kateb who, in the 1950s, managed a amateur theater troupe, at Café de Daniel and out of curiosity ends up at Randon Street where Kateb was rehearsing. In 1951, he found himself in Berlin with the EI-Mesrah EI-Djazairi troupe, then in Paris in 1952. In 1954, he was in Bucharest for the 2nd Festival of Youth and Students for Peace. The same year, he turned professional and signed with the municipal troupe of Algiers directed by Mahieddine Bachetarzi. In 1955, the DST monitored the premises on rue Randon and recorded his comrades. He arrived in Marseille and went to Paris where he met Mohamed Boudia, Hadj Omar, Missoum, Nourreddine Bouhired. “We had FLN cafés, singing Min Djibalina,” he says.