#oussekine

[samsdei]

Sayyid El Alami

[auxpetitsoignons]

OUSSEKINE (2022) - Episode 1 "Ils pourront couper toutes les fleurs, ils n'empêcheront pas la venue du printemps."

[anderwater]

Adieu La France, Bonjour l’Algérie. Quand je t’ai quittée, combien j’ai pleuré... Farewell France, Hello Algeria. When I left you, how much I cried...

OUSSEKINE, episode 2 (2022) dir. Antoine Chevrollier

[emdroid]

The actor who plays Ben Amar in Oussekine is so good--gives me Sonny Corleone vibes.

[vintagewarhol]

[evergardenwall]

one thing that impacted me a lot in the oussekine tv show is the way the narrative highlights (in my opinion) that the victims of police brutality, and more specifically the victims of racist murders by police officers, were people with lives and hopes and conflicts of their own — entire lives in all their messiness and complexity because they are human — that got taken away. and that the complexity of these lives get erased, their humanity denied, as the police refuses to recognize their responsability in their deaths, the justice system skewed in the latter’s favor.

malik’s family isn’t given the possibility, of mourning him privately, nor the time to process the events at their own pace, because their son’s name and tragic death became, for a moment in time, a tool for politics. and of course what happened is deeply political — it would be hypocritical to deny it isn’t. every new death at the hands of the police also represents the past victims who went unnoticed, are the result of political decisions — proving once again how much we need societal change.

in addition to police brutality, there is also the violence from the media, racist individuals, and politicians — all of them unleashed onto one (1) grieving family throughout the show. the attacks targeting them now that they're the center of the attention with the trial and the important media coverage, actively seeks to strip them of their humanity, just like the media first did when talking about malik’s death. and they are forced to fight back even if they are exhausted, because they have no choice and can't rest. because remaining silent would be worse. because on the other side, they're already fabricating false proofs so that those who took his life can get away with it. it highlights how horrific the way the justice system tries to turn an innocent (who is alqo already dead and can’t stand in court to defend himself !) into a criminal in order to benefit the status quo.

i’d argue that we are also told that part (and key?) of responding to police brutality — besides calls for societal change like defunding or reform or abolition, depending on one’s political orientation —, is to remember that all these victims were literal people, and not just names and cases you can quote to win arguments, debates, or elections. that their families are people, too, mourning a loved one; families who might have different reactions and needs in regards to the loss they experienced, and who can be messy and imperfect and maybe their child was not the perfect victim the media usually portrays in a positive light and did commit crimes in the past, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to die. like. holy shit. we (as in journalists, the media covering the events, politicians, activists and society at large) need to remember that. we cannot talk about societal change without acknowledging that— acknowledging marginalized people’s humanity, however messy they might be. we have to center humanity in our politics. beyond malik’s death, we get to see glimpses of he and his family’s lives, their messiness, the love they had for each other and their complicated relationship with both france and algeria. the narrative seeks to give them back their agency. and we need to do this when talking about the victims in real life too.

[ladymazzy]

Oussekine: The police killing that shocked France - BBC Culture

Oussekine: The police killing that shocked France

In 1986, Paris student Malik Oussekine died after being clubbed by police batons. It was a horrendous incident that is now the subject of a