DisneyFrench historical drama + Usekin presents “the dark part of our national history books”, according to its creator, who was looking for inspiration in the film Ava Duvernay in the American Netflix When they see us.
The four-part film by Antoine Chevrolet, one of the first Disney + France originals to be given the green light, tells the tragic death of Malik Usekin, his family’s reaction over the years and his impact on French society. In 1986, a young Franco-Algerian student was harassed and beaten by police in protest of immigration restrictions, which were lifted a few days after protests intensified after Usekin’s death.
The show, which kicks off May 11 on a vertical star with a skew for adults MessiahSaeed El Alami as Malik and Continuity Hiam Abbas in the role of his mother Aisha Usekin and is the first to be shown Office directed by Chevrolet, who oversaw a team of three French writers.
He sought inspiration from the pioneering director of the United States Duverne When they see us, an Emmy Award-winning series about the tragic story of the Central Park Five along with Wire for how the pioneering HBO show portrays different sites.
“No one has really explained who Malik is, and these immigrant stories aren’t told enough,” Chevrolet told Deadline a few days before the launch. “It’s a dark part of our national history, so it was important for me to show what happened, explain and talk to this community.”
Chevrolet first encountered this story as a young man, almost 30 years ago, after listening to a song by French rap group Assassin about how the French state killed Malik Usekin eight years ago.
He wanted to tell it in a universal way, and he was contacted by the production company Itinéraire Productions and Disney, who were happy to get the green light, impressed by his work in directing a devastating political thriller. Office and Canal + Baron Noir.
Chevrolet worked with his trio of writers to tell a broader story about French history.
One episode depicts the 1961 Paris massacre during the Algerian war, and another tells of the fear caused by the 1980s protests of the National Front.
“When we dug up the story, we found something much broader than expected,” he added. “This is not only the murder of Malik Usekin by the French police, but also the story of the different trajectories of his family in several moments of French history.”
For Chevrolet, the key was a subtle and unbiased depiction of the incident, and he spent every Sunday afternoon for four months with Vsekin’s two brothers, gradually gaining their trust as they began to open up.
“The heart and spirit of the show was family and closeness, so I couldn’t have done this show without them,” he said. “I needed to have that moral stamp.”
At the same time, Chevrolet impressed his writing group with the need for subjective coverage of events and made sure to spend time with precincts to avoid “telling stories from the point of view of idealists” so that no one seemed to be “protected.”
He praised Disney + for quickly becoming home to rich adult content through Star.
Usekin was one of the four French originals on the streamer’s debut European album in February 2021 together with Kuoka Dango Tran’s science fiction Parallels, Comedy by Batiste Philol Family weekend and Star doc Soprano: Sing or die.
Speaking exclusively to Deadline in March, Dang Tran, who recently signed a major contract with Universal International Studios, said the streaming revolution gave European creatives the opportunity to write genres that were previously the preservation of English-language writers.
https://deadline.com/2022/05/disney-oussekine-creator-when-they-see-us-1235015940/
