Having moved to Italy when he was just one year old with his Senegalese parents, Lame grew up in a social housing complex in the town of Chivasso, on the edge of the northern industrial city of Turin.

“Some things can be conveyed without words, but I wanted to tell my story and I couldn’t do that only with gestures,” he said. “Over the course of a few minutes we told an entire life until now… it means a lot to me,” he said. to attend this year’s Oscars.Ĭo-written and directed with friend and collaborator Adriano Spadaro, I Am Khabane marks a departure for Lame as his first longer-format, scripted film and also because he speaks, and mainly in English. Short film I Am Khabane explores Lame’s early life, his TikTok beginnings and also follows his trip to L.A. Every person is a person in their own way, with their own dreams and I just want to be Khaby Lame,” he said. These are legends, who have made their own story. His rags-to-riches tale is reminiscent of the journeys of the original silent movie stars Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton, although Lame says he has not taken inspiration from their work. Lame originally threw himself into making TikTok content after being laid off from his factory job in the early days of the Covid pandemic. Every kid, every person around the world can see the video and get a laugh, simply by watching the images,” he said. “The fact it’s not spoken, makes it a universal language. The social media star believes the silent aspect of his work is the bedrock of his success until now. “This person really complicated his life and I wanted to find a way to make it a bit easier,” he explained. Lame first gained traction on the back of a 40-second 2021 video in which he unpeeled a banana, made in response to a video of a banana skin being intricately sliced off with a chef’s clever knife.Īt the end of his demonstration, Lame holds out his hand palm up and shrugs in what has now become his trademark gesture.

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