By adapting the story of Malik Oussekine, a young student killed by the blows of the French police and then instrumentalized because Arab, Antoine Chevrollier does not tell only a case. In addition to its great visual and narrative qualities, Oussekine is a fresco of French history and highlights that of an outraged and mortified minority. "It was Malik's light that guided us.", delivered the very moved director at the premiere held at the Rex, surrounded by the Oussekine family and all his team. The first French mini-series broadcast by Disney+, a true event series of the platform, has this faith, so precious, in its evocative and political power, as well as in its work of historical re-enactment. Disparate qualities in the French serial landscape that Oussekine manages to polarize, strengthened by an authenticity by imperishable degrees. Analysis.
At the heart of the family
Beyond a captivating reconstruction and an admirable solemnity in the desire to draw up a political fresco, Oussekine takes its source in the heart of the family. Carried by a prodigious cast, Hiam Abbass is particularly moving in accuracy and restraint, Antoine Chevrollier honors the Oussekine family by offering them a tribute at the height of a man. During the development of the script and its structure, the director spoke at length with the brothers Mohamed and Ben Amar to bring an aura and a factual rigor. With a heartbreaking and sublime sincerity, Oussekine stands out above all as the story of a family drama before being that of a state affair. A way to restore a dignity so long denied to the Oussekines, long defamed and whose history has been instrumentalized. A political and admirable choice that brings us back to the history of immigration and, more frontally, to the history of France.
A dedicated aesthetic
Relying on subtle imagery devoid of artifice, Oussekine unravels with ease all the entanglement of such a drama and its repercussions. Just as it sets up a societal frenzy that will lead to a trial surprisingly filmed with balance, the mini-series will devote long sequences to the origins. First, those of violence, juxtaposing the death of the young Frenchman with the massacre of October 17, 1961 that cost the lives of more than a hundred Algerians, a shocking segment turned with striking prosaism. Then, skillfully invoking the flashback, transporting us to the origins of Algerian immigration by leaning on the figure of Father Oussekine, of an embroidant dignity. An aesthetic marrying the noble and delicate ambition of a primordial work that we expected more. Oussekine will certainly impose himself in the French serial landscape because of his obvious belief that another world is possible, provided he looks it in the face.A necessary mini-series to discover now on Disney+.
