Outside the box, untamable actress Sonya Mellah burns with a fiercely feminine energy, and an insatiable appetite for knowledge, culture and connecting with others. A polyglot, she speaks French, Italian, English, Arabic and Hebrew.
Born and raised in Paris, she grew up in the café owned by her parents on the Place de la République. There, as young Sonya washed coffee cups behind the bar, listening to the stories told by the regulars, she developed her imagination, her taste for writing and her love for underdog characters.
She loves poetry, Italian cinema, jazz music, wearing sexy tuxedos and riding Vespas to the Moroccan desert. She sees the world through a multifaceted, cosmopolitan lens – a hybrid mosaic made available for you to peruse on this website. A citizen of the world, Sonya has nonetheless found her heart’s home in Italy and its cinema.
Sonya Mellah’s acting spans from the most tragic to the most comic range. She instills her characters with a strangely familiar yet distant sense of humanity. This fragile heroine immerses herself into the worlds of varied roles – be they isolated, broken, transient, speechless, defeated, deeply complex, profoundly human, crazy, cast out by society, on the verge of life and death, pushing on, hurt in their feminity, powerful, ardent or brimming with secrets.
Recently, she embodied a solitary migrant (Noor in Il Bene Mio by Pippo Mezzapesa), an activist lawyer (Maître Mariam Imany in Soumaya by Waheed Khan and Ubaydah Abu-Usayd) and an excessive and violent lover in Ne plus Avoir by Sébastien Dutraive.
Sonya, by breathing poetry, depth and proud elegance into her performances, gives them particular brilliance. A multilingual artist whose expressiveness evokes faraway lands, she transports her audience to a world rich with charm and mystery.
Sonya Mellah’s warm, sensual, evocative, mysterious and velvety voice has naturally found its place on Fip radio’s waves (she is the voice of the radio’s slogan). In between music programmes, her announcements conjure up jazz, world music, theatre and poetry. As a trained actress, Sonya knows how to tune her voice to a wider range of tones – dedicated, reassuring, motherly, journalistic or sharp – she has lent her voice to documentaries, radio dramas, dubbing and commercials.
Trained on the stage, Sonya Mellah first studied acting under the tutelage of Jean Perimony and ballet dancing with Elisa Freitas Machado. She has worked on the roles of Celimène in Molière’s Misanthrope, the Marquise Cibo in Musset’s Lorenzaccio, Sonia in Life x 3 (Trois Versions de la vie) by Yasmina Reza as well as the role of Nawal in Sorched (Incendies) by Wajdi Mouawad. In Brussels, she performs in a comical one-woman show, Beaucoup de choses à vous Djire, written by Souad Belhaddad and directed by Laetitia de Fombelle. She is currently taking part in the creation of a performance about Clarice Lispector’s life and work.
Sonya Mellah writes playful culture segments for French radio Fip. She recently wrote an album called Rhythm is in my heart – a record combining poems and percussions for the National Orchestra of Ile-de-France. She has defended her Masters’ thesis on Italian cinema at the Department of Italian Studies of Paris Nanterre University, and is working on her first feature-length film script.
• SOUMAYA by Waheed Khan, LM, 2020. Maître Mariam Imany. • NE PLUS AVOIR by Sébastien Dutraive, CM, 2019. Sonia. • HAPPY BABY by Katia Ghanty and Mathieu Alexandre, web series, 2019. Sara. • IL BENE MIO by Pippo Mezzapesa, LM, 2018. Noor, female lead, selected for the 2018 Venice Film Festival, Giornate degli Autori section.
• UNE VIE written by Clarice Lispector, a performance in an apartment directed by Elisa Freitas Machado Clarice. • UN HOMME LIBRE written by Malika Madi, directed by Caroline Safarian, Espace Magh, Bruxelles. • BEAUCOUP DE CHOSES A VOUS DJIRE, one-woman show written by Souad Belhaddad, directed by Laetitia de Fombelle, tournée en Europe.
• Radio host on Fip 105.1 • Announcement voice for France 24 and RFI • Voice-over of the film ‘Carte Postale Interstellaire’, le Planétarium, Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (Paris). • Voice for radio drama Edith et Marcel, France Inter, Affaires Sensibles hosted by Fabrice Drouelle.
• Album RHYTHM IS IN MY HEART directed by Georgi Varbanov from the National Orchestra of Ile-de-France, NoMad Music Texts and interpretation. • FIP, 105.1, Maison de la Radio et de la Musique Writing and interpretation of culture segments and poems. • BAYONNE, feature film by Bernard Bolly, co-scriptwriter.
• SOUMAYA by Waheed Khan, LM, 2020. Maître Mariam Imany. • NE PLUS AVOIR by Sébastien Dutraive, CM, 2019. Sonia. • HAPPY BABY by Katia Ghanty and Mathieu Alexandre, web series, 2019. Sara. • IL BENE MIO by Pippo Mezzapesa, LM, 2018. Noor, female lead, selected for the 2018 Venice Film Festival, Giornate degli Autori section.
• UNE VIE written by Clarice Lispector, a performance in an apartment directed by Elisa Freitas Machado Clarice. • UN HOMME LIBRE written by Malika Madi, directed by Caroline Safarian, Espace Magh, Bruxelles. • BEAUCOUP DE CHOSES A VOUS DJIRE, one-woman show written by Souad Belhaddad, directed by Laetitia de Fombelle, tournée en Europe.
• Radio host on Fip 105.1 • Announcement voice for France 24 and RFI • Voice-over of the film ‘Carte Postale Interstellaire’, le Planétarium, Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie (Paris). • Voice for radio drama Edith et Marcel, France Inter, Affaires Sensibles hosted by Fabrice Drouelle.
• Album RHYTHM IS IN MY HEART directed by Georgi Varbanov from the National Orchestra of Ile-de-France, NoMad Music Texts and interpretation. • FIP, 105.1, Maison de la Radio et de la Musique Writing and interpretation of culture segments and poems. • BAYONNE, feature film by Bernard Bolly, co-scriptwriter.
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