Exile, green savings, Europe: our three TV favourites

Arte presents a beautiful animated film on the occasion of its 30th anniversary Run, Jonas Poher Rasmussen, based on the testimony of an Afghan refugee. Don’t change the channel and don’t miss the documentary Finance washes greener, Romain Girard and Matteo Born.

After all, laughing at European institutions is enough trouble. However, this is the lucky bet of the series ParliamentCreated by Noé Debré, who returns for a second season on French Television.

1/ The fate of the run

If we only remember them with cold statistics or fleeting images of “closures”, we almost forget that refugees have lives just like ours. With similar needs, sensitivities and desires. So we’re grateful to Arte for injecting a boost of humanity into our 30th anniversary programming.^e anniversary, the real OTNI – unknown television object – in the subject. Somewhere between documentary, filmed interview, biopic and animation, Runby director Jonas Poher Rasmussen shows and hears the biographical story of his friend Ami, a 36-year-old brilliant academic who was forced to flee his native Afghanistan as a child.

Lying on the table, Amin opens up to his friend, as with a psychoanalyst, revealing a certain number of traumatic experiences and secrets that he could not reveal to anyone. It begins with a carefree childhood in Kabul, where he enjoyed walking around in his sister’s nightgown and flying kites with his brother. Until the day his father, who was considered an opponent of the communist regime that followed the monarchy, was taken on a one-way trip by the police.

The horizon grew darker when the Taliban came to power. The family, now fearing for their safety, then fled to Moscow, where they found their eldest son, Abbas, who had already gone into exile in Sweden to avoid military service. Amin, his mother and the rest of his siblings spent a year alone in a small apartment watching movies. novels As the Mexicans struggled to raise the staggering sum needed to finance the secret trip that would allow Abbas to join him in Stockholm.

But even with a harsh lifestyle, cleanliness allows him to pay the “ticket” of his two sisters, who are about to experience a real hell at sea with smugglers. As for Amin, after his first failed attempt to cross. risking his and his mother’s lives, he eventually finds himself accidentally sent to Denmark, where he is ordered to tell everyone he meets that he no longer has family. It was there, at the age of 16, that he met Jonas, who decided to tell his animated story twenty years later.

Through a personal story, Run It gives flesh to the almost indescribable trials and traumas of these women and men who were forced to leave their homelands. Ami’s anger is still strong against the smugglers and police officers who exploit their extreme weakness to compete with disgrace.

The archival images of TV news interspersed among the animations not only make them more effective, but also remind us how much these “small” stories are written in the “big”. However, Amy’s odyssey is not one of misfortune: her career is largely an example of academic success that stems from her understanding of the sacrifices made by her family. And his story is interspersed with several joyful moments with his loved ones. This story is also the story of a young Muslim’s acceptance of his homosexuality by himself and his family. A simple formality unlike his other adventures.

Igor Martinache

Run, By Jonas Poher Rasmussen, broadcast on May 30 at 20:50 on Arte and available on arte.tv until July 28.

2/ When green wash touch funds

No doubt if you read it Economic alternatives, you are sensitive to environmental issues and no doubt trying to act on your scale to stop the ongoing disaster. Maybe you only buy organic and short-circuiting supplies, you’ve traded in your car for a bike, or you’d even rather add a layer of clothing than turn up the radiator thermostat in the winter. You think twice or even thrice before getting on a plane, etc.

All these eco-gestures are obviously worthy, but there is one thing that weighs more than all the others: the way we invest our savings when we are lucky enough to have some. Because depending on the investments it will be used for, its impact on climate change or biodiversity can vary significantly. The financial industry, driven by certain civil mobilisations, finally got the measure of this issue, at least in appearance, related to the rudimentary documentary released by Arte.

In recent years, “green” savings products have flourished, promising to finance only firms that are seriously committed to protecting the planet. Thus, their number has tripled in the last ten years. A madness we can rejoice in: if political leaders seem reluctant to take the necessary measures, at least the banks and other institutions draining household savings will contribute to the decarbonization of our productive apparatus by financing only the most respectable projects on the planet. So they have created entire funds with more interesting names and containing only securities, stocks or bonds, labeled “ESG” (as environmental, social and governance) by specialized rating agencies.

This is for theory. But in practice, as in a dead-end children’s radio hook show Science School, very few participants fail to receive a very flattering grade. Thus, one of the champions of these funds is the Belgian mining company Umicore. It doesn’t matter to asset managers that it pollutes miles and miles of land in the Cevennes or Flanders with impunity because it now recycles metals!

Similarly, the Emirati holding company Majid Al Futtaim has already raised more than a billion dollars through these funds, which allows it to build ski slopes in the desert. The icing on the cake is that the babies of the local rich, including those who benefit from fossil fuels, can even rub shoulders with the penguins. But be careful, they are well treated and can consume the best quality fish, as the manager of one of the recreation centers with this climate explains with a smile.

Two examples among many others of these tortufferies that would no doubt have greatly amused Moliere. But most of all, we laugh out loud when we watch their scary commercials or listen to the soothing speeches of professionals in this fast-growing segment. Added to these are the good and proper hacks of some big groups like Deutsche Bank, who even had the temerity to suddenly fire their operations manager for “green finance” on warning.

“Our duty is not to save the world”, mildly vindicates one of the Swiss financiers interviewed in the film. A speech that reminds us that finance is not just one thing “trade in promises”, also explained by Pierre-Noël Giraud. And these promises, as Henri Queuille said, bind only those who believe in them. In politics as in marketing. By decision, the ways to launder money are inexhaustible…

IM

Finance washes greener, By Romain Girard and Matteo Born, broadcast on June 7 at 22:40 on Arte and available on arte.tv from May 31 to July 6.

3/ Laughing with Europe

Series parliament, Created by Noé Debré, it returns to France.tv for a second season. A small reminder, in the first season Sami, a young parliamentary assistant, arrives in Brussels without knowing anything about European institutions. Michel Speclin, the French MP he works with, is as ignorant as he is. However, Samy is voting for an amendment that would ban “fining,” the practice of finning sharks to sell on the Chinese market before discarding them at sea.

The long and difficult course of the amendment from the fisheries committee to the plenary vote to the conciliation committee is a pretext for deciphering the functioning of the European institutions. Thus, we discover the role of lobbyists and its strict regulation by the Brussels authorities, the role of negotiation in concessions and votes between states.

In season two, Sami frees herself from Michelle Speclin. He desperately searches for an MP to help him and ends up being hired by French MP Valentine Cantet, who asks him to draft a “Blue Treaty” to protect the oceans. This is actually a set of texts that were actually discussed in Strasbourg and Brussels regarding electrofishing and accounting standards.

However, the Blue Deal quickly ran into opposition from the Dutch, who hold the presidency of the Council of Europe, who are big practitioners of electrofishing. When Michel Speclin was acting as the President of the European Parliament…

This is also the only regret of this season 2. The French MP, who no longer works with Sami, has very little screen presence, leaving us with Philippe Duquesne’s performance, which is reminiscent of Louis de Funes. But this second season remains just as joyful. He manages both humor and pedagogy to introduce us to the secrets of European institutions. Resolutely Europhile, the series never veers into anti-parliamentarianism.

Nairi Nahapetian

ParliamentSeries created by Noé Debré, seasons 1 and 2, 2x10x26 minutes, on France.tv