Luàna Bajrami

“For me, film, or any art form, is a way to ques­tion the sta­tus quo, even to shock. In any case to get a reaction.”

Orig­i­nal­ly from Koso­vo, Luà­na Bajra­mi nabbed her first role in 2011 in Olivi­er Guignard’s TV movie Adèle’s Choice along­side Miou-Miou, then played the title role of a young ado­les­cent caught up in a whirl­wind of school bul­ly­ing in Mar­i­on, 13 ans pour tou­jours. She went on to play lead­ing roles in two short films: Tom­ma­so Usberti’s Two Youths Died, win­ner of the Ciné­fon­da­tion Third Prize at the 2017 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, and Valentin Plis­son and Maxime Roux’s Après la nuit (2018). In School’s Out (2018), Sébastien Marnier’s first fea­ture loose­ly adapt­ed from Christophe Dufos­sé’s nov­el of the same name, Luà­na Bajra­mi played “icy Apolline”, the leader of an intel­lec­tu­al­ly pre­co­cious group of stu­dents fac­ing a sub­sti­tute teacher played by Lau­rent Lafitte. In 2019, she starred oppo­site Adèle Haenel and Noémie Mer­lant in Céline Sciamma’s his­tor­i­cal dra­ma Por­trait of a Lady on Fire, select­ed in com­pe­ti­tion at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, which earned her a César Award nom­i­na­tion for Most Promis­ing Actress. That same year, she was in Cédric Kahn’s Hap­py Birth­day. She will appear next in Bruno Poda­ly­dès’ French Tech and Samir Guesmi’s Ibrahim. She has just fin­ished the shoot­ing of her first fea­ture film as a direc­tor, The Hill Where Lioness­es Roar.