{"id":8506,"date":"2026-03-26T11:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T11:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/8506\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T11:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T11:05:08","slug":"squid-game-meets-ice-in-timely-belgian-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/8506\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Squid Game\u2019 Meets ICE in Timely Belgian Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe creators of The Best Immigrant<\/a> thought they were making science fiction.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Belgian series, which screens at international television festival Series Mania<\/a> this week, imagines a near future where a far-right party wins power and passes a law forcing all non-native Belgians to return \u201cto their country of origin.\u201d Quickly adjusting to the new reality, a local TV channel launches a new competition show: The Best Immigrant, in which migrants compete to prove which is the \u201cmost worthy\u201d of staying in the country. The winner gets residency. The losers are violently deported.<\/p>\n

\n\tWriters Raoul Groothuizen and Christina Poppe came up with the idea back in 2018, after noticing a sharp rise in racist rhetoric among the Flemish far-right. What would happen, they imagined, if a fascist regime took power in Belgium? How far would people, and the media, go to accommodate the new regime?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe were writing about people with foreign background getting arrested, put into camps,\u201d says Groothuizen. \u201cWe imagined it was dystopian fantasy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time they started shooting the show last year, The Best Immigrant started to resemble a news report.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn the first episode, we have a scene of police going into a school, dragging teachers into the street, something you see [in the U.S.] right now,\u201d says series director Michael Abay. \u201cReality caught up with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven the series most absurd premise \u2014 a competition in which immigrants compete for citizenship \u2014 feels ripped from the headlines. Last May, Duck Dynasty producer Rob Worsoff pitched a reality show he described as \u201cThe Biggest Loser for immigration\u201d to the Department of Homeland Security<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt really felt like art imitating life,\u201d says Jennifer Heylen, who stars as Mona, one of The Best Immigrant\u2019s unwilling contestants. \u201cWhat we thought was so extreme, just a few years ago, has become normal. The unacceptable has become acceptable. Five years ago, people would have dismissed [the premise of the show] as impossible. Now they\u2019re not even surprised by the idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor Heylen, the Belgian-born daughter of first-generation immigrants, the story got a bit too closer for comfort.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI often use my job to escape my regular life. I play a lawyer, I play a princess,\u201d the actress explains. \u201cHere I\u2019m playing a woman of color living in a racist world. I can\u2019t take off that costume when I go home. Jennifer lives in the same world as Muna. I spent three months living in that world at work and then going home to experience it there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Best Immigrant premiered on local streamer Streamz in Belgium in December. It immediately came under attack from the far-right.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of the top figures of the far-right really railed against the show, which actually helped, because everyone started talking about it, it become the number one item on the news,\u201d recalls Belgian director Adil El Arbi (Bad Boys: Ride or Die<\/a>), an executive producer on The Best Immigrant. \u201cThe fact he was outraged kind of proved our point. If he didn\u2019t recognise himself, he wouldn\u2019t be so angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs The Best Immigrant rolls out internationally \u2014 Sony Pictures Television is handling international<\/a> sales for the series, which is still looking for a U.S. distributor \u2014 El Arbi is interested to see how it will be perceived: As dystopian sci-fi or near-documentary drama.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThese days, reality is so much crazier and so much more controversial [than fiction],\u201d he says, \u201ceven dystopia can seem tame by comparison.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The creators of The Best Immigrant thought they were making science fiction. The Belgian series, which screens at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,1921,1608,4091,4803],"class_list":{"0":"post-8506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-belgium","8":"tag-belgium","9":"tag-ice","10":"tag-international","11":"tag-series-mania","12":"tag-the-best-immigrant"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116295153942829445","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}