The Secret of The Grain - Cast

Cast

• Habib Boufares as Slimane Beiji, a sixty-year old shipyard worker and immigrant from the Maghreb. Divorced from his first wife, Souad, he lives in the run-down Hotel de l'Orient owned by Latifa and her daughter Rym.
• Hafsia Herzi as Rym, the precocious twenty-year-old daughter of hotelier Latifa and a second-generation immigrant. She regards Slimane as her father and works to assist him in realising his ambition of starting a couscous restaurant.
• Hatika Karaoui as Latifa, proprietor of the Hotel de l'Orient and Slimane's lover.
• Bouraouïa Marzouk as Souad, Slimane's first wife of roughly equal age and matriarch of their family. She lives in an apartment building on the floor below her son Hamid and regularly cooks a large Sunday meal of couscous for her extended family.
• Farida Benkhetache as Karima, Slimane's daughter from his first marriage to Souad. She works in a tuna cannery and has two young children of her own by her husband.
• Abdelhamid Aktouche as Hamid
• Alice Houri as Julia, a young Russian immigrant unhappily married to Majid. She feels isolated from and unsupported by his large family, left alone all day and often all night to care for their young son with only her brother for comfort and assistance. Nonetheless she attempts to participate in the endeavour to establish the couscous restaurant.
• Cyril Favre as Sergei, Julia's supportive and diplomatic brother who gently attempts to reconcile Slimane and his family to his sister's suffering and Majid's neglect.
• Sami Zitouni as Majid, Slimane and Souad's eldest son. Married to Russian immigrant Julia with an infant son, he is a notorious philanderer; whilst he neglects his own young family, he still participates fully in the life of his extended family.
• Sabrina Ouazani as Olfa, another of Slimane's daughters by Souad and the youngest sibling, charged with caring for the younger children in the extended family.
• Mohamed Benabdeslem as Riadh, Slimane's youngest son by Souad. An adolescent with a nascent moustache, he assists in renovating the restaurant-boat under his father's supervision and maintains a romantic infatuation with Rym.
• Henri Cohen as M. Dorner, the Deputy Mayor of the port town responsible for authorising Slimane's docking permissions for his restaurant-boat. A powerful man in the town, he is slated as a potential candidate for Mayor.
• Violaine de Carné as Mme. Dorner, the wife of the Deputy Mayor and casual affair of Slimane's son, Majid.