The first two seasons of the series The Engaged have brought together an online community of fans. Expected, season 3 is now available on the francetv Slash platform and on DVD. The Engaged are even exported internationally, distributed in Europe, Southeast Asia, the United States and Brazil, in particular.
The series created five years ago by Sullivan le Postec is still as much in the real world. It once again links the fictitious “LGBT +” center in Lyon to social themes such as transidentity, police violence, fake news and Russian interference in the public sphere. “I follow the news a lot, even all the time, it feeds my work”, Sullivan Le Postec tells franceinfo. “We do not discuss the news quite a bit in French series whereas it is quite common in American series. Then I use fiction to embody the debates of the moment. “
The characters in the series also come from the field, Sullivan le Postec himself campaigning in an LGBT + association in Lyon. The strength of the series is also to shake up preconceptions, by questioning, without ever judging. “The LGBT + Center for Engaged People is a common space where activists meet with their backgrounds and sometimes their baggage of problems”, continues Sullivan Le Postec. “There are also internal conflicts when, for example, there was talk in season 1 of accepting the sœHeart of Hicham who wears the veil. An association is not always the world of Care Bears … I try to show that all realities can exist. My part of utopia is to create a world where we can disagree but still manage to discuss and find together the means to form society. ”
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In this season 3, the two main characters, Thibaut (Eric Pucheu) and Hicham (Mehdi Meskar) will move from the capital of the Gauls to that of the European institutions, in Brussels, in order to come to the aid of Anzor, a Chechen refugee and hunted down as far as France because he is gay. A tragic situation that exists in reality.
Hicham is also confronted with police violence affecting his family. Here again, Sullivan le Postec sets out different points of view. “In this season, there is a big lie that we condemn and at the same time, we explain that this lie was born from the fear that there would be riots except that – perhaps – the consequences of a lie that wants to be well intentioned are worse than the absence of this lie “, analysis Sullivan Le Postec.
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And because this season is rich and fascinating, it also evokes with Claude (Denis D’Arcangelo), activist from the start, the history of the LGBT movement and the AIDS years. “Memory is central to the LGBT community. The AIDS pandemic has brought about a huge change, transmission has not always taken place because those who were the actors of this movement have disappeared ”, explains Sullivan Le Postec. “I wanted to take charge of this memory, that’s why it’s in the series”.
The Engaged season 3, renamed The XAOC Commitments (the mysterious term attached is part of the plot) take a turn in the writing. No more setting up ten ten-minute episodes. This new and final season is three 45-minute episodes. “The opportunity to bring the secondary characters to life more deeply”, rejoices Sullivan Le Postec. “The ten-minute rhythm was an interesting structure that allowed me to integrate more characters and more diversity into Season 2, to focus on them by developing a course per episode. But it was also constraining. this new season, so I had the pleasure of writing long scenes, anchoring the script in different places, finding other dynamics. ”
But there won’t be season 4. “We will say that the series is very ambitious compared to its small budget. There are lots of sets, characters, stories processed. It’s a lot of effort for the teams who worked on the project ”, concludes the creator of the series. The team invested fully, like the members of the fictitious association brought to the screen. “Being involved in an association like I have been is an exhausting life, you need energy, it has a huge personal cost. I show in the series how associations operate, that they face funding difficulties, that they depend on policy grants and majority changes. The series also pays tribute to all these activists ”.
The series “Les Engagés XAOC” is available on france.tv slash and now on DVD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8wwiGBhw04
Seasons 1 and 2 are also online on the france.tv platform.