Being a teenager in 2022
The rising star of Quebec television Zeneb Blanchet (Lou and Sophie, The Goddess of Fireflies) is one of the headliners of two shows that give pride of place to today’s teenagers, with their questions, their setbacks and their first times. pandora and Detox thus sound the death knell for a summer audiovisual season rich in high-quality local original content.
The first is a television adaptation for Télé-Québec of the play pandora, by Quebec author, director and playwright Sarah Berthiaume, presented for ten years in Canada and awarded several times. We follow Pandore (Zeneb Blanchet), a young woman who discovers the turmoil of love and her sexuality, through her smartphone. Curious and spontaneous, she will however slip, almost in spite of herself, into the monstrous universe of cyberpornography. Where does reality stop? Is it a nightmare? How to distinguish the virtual from what is not? The poetic atmosphere and without artifice created by the director Véa also honors the frank language and the essential purpose of the work.
Detox is a miniseries co-written by actress Nadia Paradis with the collaboration of Anne-Hélène Prévost (The Sapiens) and directed by Sophia Belahmer. Zach (Zachary Evrard), a 17-year-old teenager, goes to a rehab center while his best friend is in a coma. There he will meet five other young people struggling with various addictions, including Mathieu (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier), addicted to screens, and Léa (Zeneb Blanchet), with whom he will fall under the spell despite the relationship ban imposed by the establishment. Captivating and judicious, Detox tackles current subjects related to adolescence without falling into moralization or facility. Note also the excellent original music of the series, composed and performed for the occasion by Karelle Tremblay and Jean-Philippe Levac, and the screen presence of the screenwriters of Detox, Nadia Paradis and Anne-Hélène Prévost.
The Kingdom of Terror
Just a year ago, on August 15, 2021, Afghanistan fell entirely into Taliban hands with the fall of Kabul and the withdrawal of Western forces from the country. The journalists Patrick de Saint-Exupéry and Pedro Brito Da Fonseca, who went there during the year, report, in the documentary Under Taliban rule, of the gap that separates the new leaders and the population, more isolated, more oppressed and more miserable than ever. A chilling investigation whose stories and testimonies sometimes appear implausible.
Twenty years earlier, the Taliban had indeed been driven out of power by the “war on terrorism” initiated by George W Bush after the September 11 attacks. Back at the head of Afghanistan, the latter, self-proclaimed “victors” over the “greatest military power” in the world, now pride themselves on their regime of terror and violence which is based on the restoration of ” Islamic emirate” and on the entry into force of the “true sharia”. If the entire Afghan population is a victim of this change of power, women are particularly affected by their rights which are considerably restricted, or even disappeared.
failed attempt
Bell dangled us with a documentary series of gripping stories of survivors, these men and women for whom existence was hanging by a thread, but something promised is not always something due. Between two layers of failed sensationalism and confused language, I came close to death actually misses what could have served as an example to inform the public and raise awareness of domestic accidents or natural disasters, among others.