The mezzo soprano singer Malika Bellaribi Le Moal, known as "the diva of the suburbs" sees her autobiography adapted on France 2 in the television movie "The white sandals", where she is played by Amel Bent.

Invited by "Culture Médias" a few days before the broadcast, she recounts her difficult and extraordinary journey.

INTERVIEW

The story of Malika Bellaribi Le Moal is also that of France and the slums of the 1960s and 1970s. Despite a difficult start, Malika Bellaribi Le Moal manages to get out of poverty and become a classical singer.

The mezzo soprano nicknamed "the diva of the suburbs" told her life in the book "The white sandals", adapted in a telefilm which France 2 diffuses Monday evening at 9 pm.

Guest of 

Culture Médias, 

she recounts her impressive journey.

>> Find Culture Médias in replay and podcast here

It is the singer Amel Bent who embodies her in the TV movie, even if Malika Bellaribi Le Moal dubbed her on the lyrical vocals.

The viewer follows the life of the mezzo soprano from his childhood, in the slum of Nanterre.

"We had little huts on dirt," recalls the singer.

"A lot of people who worked for roads and construction built themselves tin and cement shacks to live on."

Singing discovered thanks to a car accident

It was in this poor environment that Malika Bellaribi Le Moal grew up, before a serious car accident, which led the child to be cared for by the sisters of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.

"My father had great confidence in these nuns, because they came to the slums to treat the children and give injections and tutoring," she explains.

It is in the religious institution that she will discover with wonder the classical field, before the death of her father, the year of her six years.

The TV movie "The White Sandals" shows the racism suffered very early on by Malika Bellaribi Le Moal, who grew up in France during the Algerian war.

"There was a kind of rejection, they made me understand that I was not like the others", she indicates modestly, remembering that these scenes from the TV movie "cost her a few therapy sessions".

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Amel Bent: "I thought of never coming back"

Before she became a singer and made a career, Malika Bellaribi Le Moal suffered other hardships.

During a stay in Algeria to visit her family, her mother tries to marry her by force.

The TV movie shows that to oppose it Malika Bellaribi Le Moal chooses to lose her virginity and threaten her mother to commit suicide.

A test that the TV movie has chosen to show less crudely than reality.

A history of women

"It is true that I took a slap when I announced to my mother that I was no longer a virgin", explains the mezzo soprano.

"But I was more raw than in the TV movie. I told my mother that it was not her who had pain in the ass, that it was me. I had to be very hard on her. . "

Malika Bellaribi Le Moal explains, however, having forgiven her mother, who allowed her to return to France with her brother's papers, without getting married.

"My mother had no choice. The women of that time did not receive therapy, they could not go to school," she recalls.

"My book is also a denunciation of what women go through." 

The one who is embodied on the screen by Amel Bent keeps a very vivid memory of her return to France, to Orly airport.

"I took off my shoes and walked barefoot on the grass I was so happy to be free," she smiles.

It was not until several years later that she became a singer.

A continuation of his journey to discover Monday evening at 9 pm on France 2, in "The white sandals".