Ismael Kanater

Ismaïl Abou El Kanater (Arabic: إسماعيل أبو القناطر; 1956 or 1957 – 20 February 2026) was a Moroccan actor. He participated in several Moroccan and foreign films and television series. Ismail began his artistic career through training at the Conservatory in Casablanca. He studied alongside Aziz Saadallah, Khadija Asad and others, and participated as an actor in the plays (The Ghoul) and (Our Right to Land). In the early seventies, he participated, along with Conservatoire students, in founding the (Pocket Theater) troupe and undertaking a theatrical tour in Algeria. In 1973, he worked in the plays of Tayeb Saddiki such as (Maqamat Badi Al-Zaman Al-Hamdani), (Sidi Abdel-Rahman Al-Majdoub) and (Al-Sufoud), and in some television sketches by the late director Hamid Bin Al-Sharif, in addition to a dramatic work entitled (The Deserted Village), accompanied by Khadija Asad and Al-Shuaiba Al-Athrawi, Touriya Jabrane, and Zhour Maamri. He also participated with the director Abd al-Rahman al-Khayyat in the play (Dirham al-Halal) alongside Naima al-Mashriqi, Aziz Mawhoub and others, and in a television movie as a person whose role is only he and Naima al-Mashriqi and directed by the husband of the latter. In 1977, Abou El Kanater traveled to the United States to study the art of diagnosis, in fulfillment of a deep desire in himself since childhood, in which he started watching American films in particular in the Mondial and Monte Carlo halls and others with his father, his dream was to one day become an international actor of the caliber of Marlon Brando. Indeed, he enrolled in an American university, where he studied cinema, painting, sculpture, engineering and design for four years, and obtained a degree in cinema (major) and psychology (minor), and instead of merging into the worlds of cinema, he returned to the theater there and performed the plays (Diary of a Madman) by Nikolai Gogol and (Caligula) by Albert Camus. He made successful tours. He also stood on the stage of the most famous experimental and avant-garde theaters in New York (Manhattan), and worked with the world-famous "Lamama" theater and with other groups. Under the urgency of the desire to practice cinematic and television diagnostics, Abu al-Qanater went to Hollywood in the nineties, but the road was not paved with roses, and he returned to practicing his theatrical love through the play (Shahrazad and the Four Daughters of Baghdad) that was successfully shown.