Creative people The best immigrant They thought they were making science fiction.
The Belgian series, which screens at the international television festival Series Mania this week, imagines a near future in which a far-right party wins power and passes a law forcing all non-indigenous Belgians to return “to their country of origin.” To quickly adapt to the new reality, a local TV channel launches a new competitive programme: The best immigrantAs immigrants compete to prove who is “worthy” of staying in the country. The winner gets accommodation. The losers are violently deported.
Writers Raoul Grothuizen and Christina Pope came up with the idea in 2018, after noticing a sharp rise in racist rhetoric among the Flemish far right. Imagine what would happen if a fascist regime seized power in Belgium? How far will people and the media go to accommodate the new regime?
“We were writing about people with foreign backgrounds being rounded up and put into camps,” Groothuisen says. “We imagined it was a dystopian fantasy.”
By the time they started filming the show last year, The best immigrant It’s starting to resemble a news report.
“In the first episode, we have a scene of police entering a school, dragging the teachers out into the street, which is something you see [in the U.S.] “Right now,” says series director Michael Abay. “We’ve realized reality.”
Even the series’ most absurd premise — a competition in which immigrants compete for citizenship — feels like it was ripped from the headlines. Last May, Duck Dynasty Producer Rob Worsoff presented a reality show that he described as “The biggest loser Immigration” to the Department of Homeland Security.
“It really felt like art imitating life,” says Jennifer Helin, who plays Mona, one of them. “Best immigrant”Unwilling contestants. “What we thought was so extreme, just a few years ago, has become normal. The unacceptable has become acceptable. Five years ago, people were rejecting [the premise of the show] Impossible. “Now they are not even surprised by the idea.”
For Helen, the Belgian-born daughter of first-generation immigrants, the story is getting a little too close for comfort.
“I often use my job to escape from my normal life. I play a lawyer, and I play a princess,” the actress explains. “Here I play a woman of color who lives in a racist world. I can’t take this outfit off when I come home. Jennifer lives in the same world as Mona. I spent three months living in that world at work and then came home to experience it there.”
The best immigrant It premiered on local streamer Streamz in Belgium in December. It was immediately attacked by the extreme right.
“A senior figure on the far right strongly objected to the show, which really helped, because everyone started talking about it, and it became number one in the news,” Belgian director Adil El-Arabi recalls.Bad Boys: Ride or Die), executive producer at The best immigrant. “The fact that he was angry proved our point. If he didn’t recognize himself, he wouldn’t be so angry.”
like The best immigrant Being released internationally – Sony Pictures Television is handling international sales for the series, which is still searching for a US distributor – Al-Arabi is interested in seeing how it will be viewed: as a dystopian sci-fi or a quasi-documentary drama.
“These days, reality is crazier and more controversial [than fiction]“Even dystopia can seem tame by comparison,” he says.
