Lebanese actor Josef Akiki came to the attention of international audiences with his role in Charlie Kaufman’s short film How To Shoot A Ghost, which world premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Akiki stars alongside Jessie Buckley as two newly dead young people who meet on the streets of Athens, a role he landed through a self-tape audition after a friend, Lebanese director Ahmad Ghossein, recommended him to the US filmmaker.
Although he wanted to become an actor since he was a child, Akiki was 23 when he enrolled on a cinema studies course at USEK in Jounieh in 2016. He followed that with a performing arts degree at the Institute of Fine Arts at Lebanese University, graduating in 2020.
In his second year, Akiki won a best actor award at Alexandria Theatre Festival for his role in a play titled The Dictator, and the stage continues to be a big draw.
“What I love about theatre and film is that they are mediums for truth, they only work when there is truth,” he says. “My favourite part working in both is the preparation, the search, the slow transformation — that is the world I thrive in.”
Other screen roles to date have included the Syria-Lebanon crime drama Aal Had, a limited series created and written by Lubna Haddad and Lana Al Jundi for MENA network Shahid, and the 2024 omnibus film Disorder, which showcased the turmoil of living in Lebanon in recent years. The actor still lives in Beirut, telling Screen International: “I have remained because, despite everything, it’s an undeniably exceptional place.”
However, looking to explore new opportunities and take advantage of the platform that Kaufman’s short film has provided, he notes that a move abroad is definitely on the horizon. The native Arabic and French speaker, who also has a flawless command of English, sees himself “doing what I love most, acting and telling untold stories, regardless of the medium”, in the next five years.
And on his days off, Akiki will continue to do a few of his favourite things: “Watching my plants grow in silence, riding my motorcycle, cooking and doing the dishes while listening to Bach.”
No comments yet