Born in 1965, Nadir Mokneche spent his childhood in Algiers and passed his baccalaureat in France in 1984. Then he left for London and started travelling. Back to Paris, he followed drama courses from 1989 to 1993 at the Chaillot National Theatre and with Ariane Mnouchkine at the “Theatre du Soleil”. He discovered the cinema there, shot short movies with a super-8 camera. Between 1993 and 1995, he attended film classes at the New School for Social Research in New York, directed two short films and won the first prize at the University festival.