Le témoignage de Sami Bouajila : "Ca a commencé avec papa, et maman l'a suivi, mais on n'a rien vu"

Actor Sami Bouajila grew up in a small family in Grenoble: two loving parents of Tunisian origin and two children, two brothers, Hédi and Sami; "a very close-knit family." "It's insidious how the disease creeps in, little by little," the actor says. "It started with Dad, in 2004, I'd say. Yes, it was already starting to crumble when the film Indigènes came out. There was actually a new movie theater near my parents' apartment. Dad used to walk past it all the time. Indigènes was out, but he didn't talk about it. Maybe out of modesty. He was a movie buff, though. He was the one who made me love movies. One day, a security guard saw my dad and took him to see Indigènes. But he never mentioned it to me himself." Then, Sami Bouajila's brother called him. He was wondering about their father's health. "At first, those around him were in denial. Unconsciously, seeing Dad or his family like that, the first instinct was to be annoyed... Then we realized that Dad didn't even recognize Mom anymore. And then Mom followed him, but we couldn't see anything. And she was in denial too... In fact, it's gradual. They explained it to us afterward. There are classic symptoms of the disease. So, at first, it's a bit amusing, well, surprising, and we laugh about it. Afterward, we're destabilized. And then, we all enter into nothingness. We're helpless." Then came an appointment with a neurologist, at the same time as Sami Bouajila's father was diagnosed. "She told us, 'It's not your father I'd be worried about, because we know, but it's your mother.'" The two brothers then noticed that their mother, an excellent cook, was no longer one. They were on the lookout for signs. "But she was putting on a show, she was too strong." Then there were episodes of wandering on public streets at the father's house, and aggression; symptoms that can appear in people with Alzheimer's disease or a related illness. The condition was progressing. A few years later, Sami Bouajila's brother, passing through Tunis, met someone who told him about a medical center, "in my mother's village, 500 meters from where she grew up." "She lived there with my father." The Bouajila brothers' parents have their bearings there. "And you know, with Alzheimer's, you don't remember the recent past, but the past." The two brothers took their parents to Tunisia. "When they heard Arabic spoken, they thought they'd never left." The two children then traveled to Tunisia as much as possible to see their parents. "Then, Dad left. And Mom, at first, was looking for her husband. Within a week, she stopped asking for Dad. Mom then gained strength and weight. She has a bright eye, but she doesn't speak. It takes her two days to recognize me, but when she does, you can see it right away in her eyes. She holds my hand, and she never lets go." Interview conducted in October 2024. @France Alzheimer - 2025 A France Alzheimer and Related Diseases collection with Laurent Dupuis/Bénédicte Fonfroide de Lafon/Leandro Neto/Sandrine Nowak Directed by - Yoni Nahum Interview - Laurent Dupuis/Yoni Nahum Image - Jonas Leather Sound/Mixing - Grégoire De Mareuil Editing - Sophie Tapia Makeup - Cara Cullen Ground Music - Oaksome Graphic Design - Héloïse Fournier Studio - 11e District