At 21, Youssef Zouini was arrested for a robbery in which he never participated. In prison, he discovers the theater. Acquitted, he enrolled in the Cours Florent and had just shot in a film.
From the darkness of prison to the lighting of filming, Youssef Zouini knew how to bounce back, no doubt. But April 14, 2005 remains engraved forever in his mind. It is 6 a.m. when a dozen hooded police officers break down his door to search his home. Handcuffed, accused of robbery, the BEP student is flabbergasted. “I was told: ‘It’s going to take a few hours’, it took a few years…”, he laments. We place him in police custody, and we present him with a ghost mask, that of the film Scream.
“It was mine, I lent it to an old high school acquaintance for a Halloween party.” But now, this mask was used during a violent robbery that occurred six months earlier, with the taking hostage of seventeen employees. When asked about what he was doing on the evening of the events, Youssef is wrong by twenty-four hours. “A fatal mistake, he regrets. I remembered roughly having spent the night with my girlfriend. In reality, that evening, I was at home on the phone with her for two hours.”
In prison, in order not to go crazy, he enrolls in the theater workshop
The police conclude that Youssef is lying and was part of the gang of robbers. He is brought before the examining magistrate. “The magistrate told me: ‘Mr. Zouini, you got on the train, I’m going to take you to the terminus.'” The young man from Nantes with no criminal record is imprisoned. “From the first days, I wrote to justice, to ministries, everywhere, to defend myself. I sent 486 letters”, he explains. To escape the harsh conditions of the solitary confinement where he is detained, Youssef enrolls in a theater workshop.
“It allowed me to see other prisoners, to discuss so as not to go crazy.” It’s a revelation for the young man, who plays Romeo, then Lorenzaccio, meets Molière and Shakespeare. “I discovered a world that was completely unknown to me. In the evening, in my cell, I watched with admiration the actors on TV.” One of his neighbors tells him about the Cours Florent in Paris, where the greatest actors are trained. Leaving, convinced that he will be exonerated, that’s where he will go, he swears to himself. If justice permits. But during his trial at first instance, in June 2007, Youssef was sentenced to ten years in prison. “I was dazed.”
The school, moved by his story, offers him his education
Especially since the proof of his innocence had been in the file from the start: the analysis of the telephony proved that he was indeed at home that evening. This crucial element will finally allow Youssef to recover freedom under judicial supervision seven months later, then to be acquitted on appeal, in May 2009. He passes the hearings of the Cours Florent. The school, moved by his story, offers him his education. The budding actor regains his footing, writes two books…
At the end of last December, his efforts finally paid off. He shot for the first time in a thriller, Overdose, on the world of go fast, these drug conveyors in overpowered cars. He plays a gangster role alongside Kool Shen and Sofia Essaïdi, under the sharp eye of director Olivier Marchal. “A first role, but not the last”, hopes Youssef, who now wishes to adapt his life to the screen.