Oussekine: The police killing that shocked France
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Loading... - Antonio Cruz
- 11 May 2022
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Indeed, the story remains so relevant that in addition to the TV series, a new film, Nos Frangins (Our Brothers), about the night of Oussekine's murder, directed by Rachid Bouchareb, will debut at this month's Cannes Film Festival.
The terrible events
So what happened on that fateful night of 6 December 1986? Oussekine had the misfortune to be walking in a Paris street near the student protests against proposed changes to the university admission system and the introduction of tuition fees, when he was set upon by the police, as they tried to clamp down on the protestors; witnesses reported him being chased by them into a building and clubbed with batons. As further detailed in an LA Times report, an ambulance was called – but not long after Oussekine was taken to hospital, he was declared dead. The French public prosecutor then released a statement saying that the wounds he had incurred from being beaten were not substantial enough to have killed him, and that he died as a result of a heart attack instead. Nonetheless, there were riots in Paris following his death, and it forced France into a period of reflection, especially when it was later revealed that Oussekine had died in the hallway where he had been beaten by police. In January 1990, two policemen, Jean Schmitt and Christophe Garcia, were charged with causing his death, though they both only received suspended prison sentences.
There had been a period of hope for a lot of immigrants in the early 1980s – but the death of Oussekine was the beginning of a less rosy reality – Antoine Chevrollier
With La Haine, the tragic incident left an impact on French culture, as well as society more generally. Oussekine's death is referenced in the film's opening montage, via archive footage from the riots that took place after his death, and the film then begins properly with a similar incident of a French man of Arab descent seriously injured in police custody, which sets the plot in motion. La Haine changed French cinema by moving the focus away from the white middle-class bohemians living out love triangles on Paris' Grands Boulevards, beyond the Périphérique, to the run-down Lego-like buildings in the suburbs, or banlieues, where the poor, working-class people lived.
But has France itself changed in the 35 years since his death? That's the question that is inevitably prompted by Oussekine, which looks at this pivotal event in French race relations in a manner akin to how Steve McQueen recently shone a light on black British history, and the injustices therein, in his acclaimed BBC/Amazon series Small Axe.
Oussekine tells the story of Oussekine's death from the perspective of the oppressed – not only Oussekine himself but his family, as they fought for justice. It has been created, written and directed by Antoine Chevrollier (previously one of the directors of spy thriller series The Bureau, starring Kassovitz) and co-written by French literary sensation Faïza Guène, as well as Julien Lilti and Cédric Ido, with the writer's room being representative of the multicultural France being depicted on screen. The talent in front of the camera includes Hiam Abbas, the revered Palestinian actress perhaps best known as Marcia Roy in Succession, who plays Oussekine's mother, in what is another incredible performance, alongside rising stars Sayyid El Alami, Malek Lamraoui, Tewfik Jallab, Naidra Ayadi and Mouna Soualem.
Series creator Chevrollier was around 10 years old when he first encountered the tragic story of Oussekine. Too young to watch La Haine, he heard the name on a rap album inspired by the film. "It was a song from the band Assassin called L'état Assassin, and the chorus was "L'état Assassin, une example Malik Oussekine" [The state of the assassin/one example Malik Oussekine], and his name got stamped on my mind."
In March, the first episode of Oussekine played as the closing-night presentation of French television festival Series Mania in Lille, where the audience was spellbound. The opener traces how news of Malik's death filtered through to the rest of the family. Rather than show the moment of death, it concentrates on the anguish that Malik's sister Sarah goes through as she weighs up how and when she will tell her mother that her son is dead.
In an effort to give multiple perspectives on the life and death of Malik, the four episodes are divided thematically. The second concentrates on the police cover-up as they first lie about when and how Malik died and then try to massage the witness accounts and reports to put themselves in the best light possible. The third looks at the story of Oussekine's family, with flashbacks to their life in Algeria starting in 1977 as it traces how Malik's parents made the decision to move to France. The final episode revolves around the court case, asking philosophical questions about the treatment of immigrants and what it means to be a multicultural society. Read More...
