Ahmed Boulane was born in Salé, Morocco. He was expelled from school three
times, and was only 16 when they threw him out for good. However, this
didn't stop him from learning to speak four languages fluently.
Boulane was an actor with the Moroccan National Theater Company and the
national Moroccan radio theater troupe from 1974 to 1977. His first job
in the cinema was with Nabyl Lahlou in a wacky Moroccan movie,
"Al-Kanfoudi". He was hired to play the part of a young, unemployed man,
but Boulane found it impossible to leave the set once he had finished being
an actor. He tried his hand at being a boom operator and grip
(both of these too physically strenuous for him), and eventually finished the
film as a floor assistant.
But Ahmed Boulane had been bitten by the bug, a passion that has been
the motor for a rich and varied career in cinema and television as
actor, location manager, assistant director, casting director, and
awarded screenwriter/director/producer. During the past 40 years he has
worked on more than 50 feature films and documentaries and more than a
hundred commercials, both Moroccan and international. The names of
Giuliano Montaldo, Alan Pakula, Carlo Di Palma, Phillipe de Broca, Jean
Delannoy, Nicholas Roeg, and William Friedkin appear on his long C.V.
During the mid-90s he began to feel restless. He decided to add a
nationality; he became an Irish citizen in 1995. And he decided he
needed to direct his own projects. The result... in 1996 he created his
production company, Boulane-O'Bryne Production (BO'B Prod), to produce
"Voyage dans le Passé" ("Past Recollections") and "Ali, Rabiaa et les autres" ("Ali, Rabiaa and the Others"), two films that
earned him both critical acclaim and the respect of the public.
His film "Les anges de Satan" ("The Satanic Angels") was released in
March, 2007. The film is based on a true story: the controversial arrest
of fourteen young Moroccan hard rock musicians falsely accused
of adhering to Satanism.
His feature film "Le retour du fils" ("The Return of the Son") was selected as "Coup de coeur" in the 12th Marrakech International Film Festival in 2012.
His latest film "La Isla" ("The Island"), a political comedy in co-production between Morocco and Spain, was selected as "Coup de coeur" in the 15th Marrakech International Film Festival in 2015 and won the best comedy award in a festival in Cordoba, Columbia.
In 2019 he wrote his autobiography "Ma vie est belle", translated into English "What a Beautiful Life".
