Simon Abkarian
Simon Abkarian (born 5 March 1962) is a French-Armenian actor. Born in Gonesse, Val d'Oise, of Armenian descent, Abkarian spent his childhood in Lebanon. He moved to Los Angeles, where he joined an Armenian theater company managed by Gerald Papazian. He returned to France in... Read full bio →
Featured Characters
Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
Vanished
Alice Monroe's romantic French vacation becomes a dangerous mystery when boyfriend Tom Parker vanishes from a train to Arles, forcing her to uncover hidden truths about his past.
Les hirondelles de Kaboul
Summer 1998 - Kabul under Taliban rule. Zunaira and Mohsen are young and in love. Despite the daily violence and misery, they hope for a better future. One day, a foolish gesture causes life to take an irrevocable turn.
Deux moi
Rémy is a young Parisian with an unskilled job. Mélanie is a young Parisienne who works in scientific research. Two depressive moods living in close proximity, but being unaware of each other. Will they ever meet?
Edmond
Paris, France, December 1897. The young playwright Edmond Rostand feels like a failure. Inspiration has abandoned him. Married and father of two children, desperate and penniless, he persuades the great actor Constant Coquelin to perform the main role in his new play.
Djam
Djam, a young Greek woman, is sent to Istanbul by her uncle Kakourgos, a former sailor with a passion for Rebetiko, to find a rare part that will repair their boat. In Istanbul, she encounters Avril, a nineteen-year-old French girl, alone and without any money, who came to Turkey as a voluntary worker with refugees.
La mécanique de l'ombre
Two years after a burn-out, Duval is still unemployed. Contacted by an enigmatic businessman, he is offered a simple and well-paid job: transcribing telephone tapping. Duval accepts financially without questioning the purpose of the organization that employs him.
Chouf
Chouf: It means “look” in Arabic, but it is also the name of the watchmen in the drug cartels of Marseille. Sofiane is 20. A brilliant student, he comes back to spend his holiday in the Marseille ghetto where he was born. His brother, a dealer, gets shot before his eyes.
The Cut
In 1915 a man survives the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire, but loses his family, speech and faith. One night he learns that his twin daughters may be alive, and goes on a quest to find them.
Gett
The trial story of Viviane Amsalem's five year fight to obtain her divorce in front of the only legal authority competent for divorce cases in Israel, the Rabbinical Court.
Colt 45
The young police man Vincent is the best in his class, and denies to be recruited to the special forces. But when the corrupt Milo manages to get a grip on him, his life is turned into a living nightmare.
La marche
In 1983, in France experiencing intolerance and racial violence , three young teens and the priest Minguettes launching a largely peaceful march for equality and against racism, over 1,000 km between Marseille and Paris .
Angélique
The incredible destiny of Angélique: a beautiful girl who found in her love for Joffrey Peyrac the strength to fight injustice and submission in a century plagued by power struggles, inequality and the oppression.
Zarafa
After escaping the clutches of a slave trader, a bold ten-year-old Sudanese boy befriends a young giraffe and a kind Bedouin, who takes them on a splendid journey via a hot-air balloon as far as the palace of King Charles X of France.
Tête de turc
A 14 year old boy, an ER doctor, a cop looking for revenge, a mother fighting for her children and a man distraught by the death of his wife see their destinies come together. As the doctor spends several days in a coma, events keep on happening and all will be swept by the shock wave.
Rage
A schoolboy uses his cellphone camera to shoot intimate interviews with people working at a New York fashion house and secretly posts them on the internet. Result: a bitterly funny expose of an industry in crisis, during a week in which an accident on the runway becomes a murder investigation, and denial leads to devastation.
L'armée du crime
In Paris during WWII a very successful resistance group is led by Armenian exile Missak Manouchian.
Shiva
The Ohaion family is mourning the death of one of their relatives. In keeping with tradition, they gather together in the home of the deceased and stay there for seven days. Forced to put up with one another day and night, the brothers and sisters soon let their bitterness and arguments override the sense of communal reverence.
Secret défense
Diane, jeune recrue de la DGSE et Pierre, jeune recrue de l'islamisme radical, sont pris dans l'engrenage de la guerre entre les terroristes et les services secrets.
Musée haut, musée bas
A curator terrified of green plants, a ballet of Virgin Saints, a minister of Culture lost in an exhibition of sex organs, a car that has disappeared in the Rembrandt car park, visitors in love with the Impressionists, Gilbert and George, Picasso, Gauguin and Warhol - all are connected with an art museum.
Rendition
When an Egyptian terrorism suspect "disappears" on a flight from Africa to Washington DC, his American wife and a CIA analyst find themselves caught up in a struggle to secure his release from a secret detention facility somewhere outside the US.
Persepolis
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
Le voyage en Arménie
This is a story about returning to ones ancestral homeland. Anna is a cardiologist who discovers her father has fled to his native Armenia after being diagnosed with a heart problem. Despite their contentious relationship, she sets out to bring her father back for this operation.
Le serpent
Fashion photographer Vincent Mandel, in the midst of a difficult divorce, is suddenly being accused of rape and extorted. What does his former classmate Joseph Plender want from him?
Casino Royale
In his first mission, James Bond must stop Le Chiffre, a banker to the world's terrorist organizations, from winning a high-stakes poker tournament at Casino Royale in Montenegro.
Les mauvais joueurs
Paris, le quartier du Sentier. Noël approche et la vie de Vahé Krikorian part à vau-l'eau. La boutique de son père, avec qui il travaille, va bientôt fermer. Trop de dettes et d'impayés. Lu Ann, la femme qu'il aime, le quitte et il sent bien que les arnaques au bonneteau qu'il pratique avec Sahak et son frère Toros ne vont pas le mener loin.
J'ai vu tuer Ben Barka
My name is Georges Figon. Okay I'm dead but, being the talkative kind, death isn't going to stop me from speaking. Yes, I'm a shady individual. Sure I have links with the underworld and other dark forces. But luring Ben Barka, the Moroccan opposition leader, into a trap was mainly an opportunity for me to become a great movie producer.
Dans tes rêves
Ninth is a promising young rapper whose reputation does not exceed even the few streets of his neighborhood. With his band and supported by Keuj, hairdresser apprentice producer, he tries to attend concerts and trying to break into the music, to the chagrin of his mother, who would see him in a more conventional career at the post office...
Yes
In this film, told almost entirely in iambic pentameter, She is a scientist in a loveless marriage to Anthony, a devious politician. He is a Lebanese doctor in self-imposed exile, working as a chef in a London restaurant. They meet at a banquet and fall into a carefree, passionate relationship.
Ve'Lakhta Lehe Isha
The story takes place in Haifa, Israel, in 1979, during three days before the Shabbat.
The Truth About Charlie
The Truth About Charlie is a 2002 remake of the 1963 film Charade (which starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn). It is also an homage to François Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player and that film's star Charles Aznavour appeared as himself and sang his song "Quand tu m'aimes" (English version).
Ni pour, ni contre (bien au contraire)
"Ni Pour, Ni Contre" tracks the fall of a young TV camerawoman, Caty, after she becomes involved with a group of petty criminals and their enigmatic leader, Jean. The gang lives hand-to-mouth until the day Jean plans a daring bank robbery.
J'irai au paradis car l'enfer est ici
After the robbery of a bank that turns badly, François takes refuge with a friend of his father who is also in the "business". The threat of police hunt will soon burst the small band of gangsters.
Chacun cherche son chat
When Chloe, a young Parisian, decides to take a long-overdue vacation, she has to find someone to look after Gris-Gris, her beloved cat. Everyone, including her gay male roommate, refuses to help her, but she finally makes an arrangement with the elderly Madame Renée, who often watches over other peoples' cats and dogs.