Hello, My Movievaures! I hope you had a good week. I’m back with a new review on a great but despairing TV Show: Oussekine. This French Disney show was obviously promoted in France and French-speaking countries, but I truly recommend everyone with a Disney + subscription to watch it. It is based on a true story that I imagine many people don’t know about but deserves to be told. Now, let’s get into the non-spoilers part:

6th of December 1986: Malik Oussekine, a young man, is found dead in a Parisian building during a night of tension due to a series of student riots. Very quickly everyone founds out three policemen are implicated in his death creating a political and social scandal that would impact France’s society for months, if not years. In the center of all that is the Oussekine family as they found themselves drag into stakes that go beyond them, completely crashing their grieving process and highlighting a fracture between themselves as a parallel to what was happening within French.

It is always complicated to portray a true story. Producers are forced to take a stand and are not always able of presenting all points of view. In this short series, the goal is clear: tell this hard story through the Oussekine’s experience of it all. I appreciated this perspective, as per the distinctive personalities that compose this family. Five brothers and sisters, all with different opinions on life, goals, and what justice means. The way this tragedy transforms the dynamic between all of them is quite depressing, but realistic showing that not everyone, even those who lived the same experiences and had the same education, wants the same thing.

Of course, I cannot dismiss one of the main subjects of this show and what instigated this event: racism, and even worse, racism within French institutions. As a symbol of what discrimination looks like, even when all the boxes are checked in terms of cultural integration, this story shows how hard it is for some people to go above their prejudices and others to feel included in a world that always portrays them as a danger. It is quite dramatic to see how little justice matters when politics and power are at stake.

In short, this is a very moving and quite depressing mini-series that has the merit of telling a story a bit forgotten, but that unnfortuntaly still resonates in today’s western society. The acting is great and the back and forth between flashbacks of the night of the murder, the family’s past and what is happening throughout the investigation and trial is perfectly directed. I absolutely recommend this show for everyone, especially for those show don’t know anything about this true story.

This is all for today My Movievaures. Let me know your thoughts on this show and if you’ve heard about this story before. I’ll be back next week with a new review on a Disney movie. I’ll be writing about some of the most expected shows of the year (Stranger Things & Obi-Wan Kenobi) after all the episodes have been released. In the meantime, don’t forget to follow me on Instagram on the_movievaures!