Megan joins rising stars constellation

Unveiled - ten talents making an impression in French cinema

by Richard Mowe

Megan Northam … attention grabbing roles in Greek Salad and Rabia
Megan Northam … attention grabbing roles in Greek Salad and Rabia Photo: UniFrance

Among the 10 to Watch new talents unveiled at the UniFrance Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in Paris yesterday, over lunch at a hotel de luxe just off the Champs Elysées, was Franco-British actress Megan Northam. She has been assiduously building her career, notably with Cédric Klapisch’s follow-on from Pot Luck, the Prime series Greek Salad.

Her work on the series earned her a Series Mania Actress Revelation award in 2023, while her role in Mareike Engelhardt’s prisons drama Rabia has garnered a 2025 Revelations nomination in the Césars, the French Oscars. She plays the title role of a 19-year-old who sets off for jihad in Syria and finds herself locked up in a women’s house with a hundreds of other young people from all over the world. In order to survive, she becomes the assistant of the director and develops a master-slave relationship that eventual breaks her spirit.

Megan Northam … first big break with Gérard Depardieu
Megan Northam … first big break with Gérard Depardieu Photo: UniFrance

Although she has a British father and a French mother she feels 100 per cent French and was burn in Nantes where she trained in the cello at the Conservatory, adding singing, dancing, music and cinematic skills to her repertoire. Her father’s work as a set designer opened up the world of theatre and music.

Her first break on the big screen came alongside Gérard Depardieu in the Netflix series Notre-Dame, La Part Du Feu, and she appeared alongside Charlotte Gainsbourg in Les Passagers De La Nuit by Mikhaël Hers. She confronted an alien invasion in another feature film, Meanwhile On Earth, by Jérémy Clapin.

She works in English for the first time in a directorial debut by actor Harris (Triangle Of Sadness, Babygirl) Dickson which filmed in London and is as yet untitled. She cannot reveal much but film deals with the subjects of homelessness and mental health.

The other talents alongside her comprise actor Adam Bessa for Jonathan Millet’s Les Fantômes; directors and co-writers Ludovic and Zoran Bouikjherma for Leurs Enfants Après Eux; director Julien Colonna for Le Royaume; Louise Courvoisier for Holy Cow; actor Sayyid El Alami for La Pampa by Antoine Chevrollier; actress India Hair for Aude Léa Rapin’s Planète B as well as Emmanuel Mourtet’s Three Friends; actress Lou Lampros for Gaël Morel’s Vivre, Mourir, Renaître; director Jonathan Millet for Les Fantômes; and Agathe Riedinger for Diamant Brut in competition at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

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