In development for five years, the detective series Ourika, imagined by rapper Booba and former police officer Clément Godart, premieres this Thursday, March 28 on Prime Video. Presented as an “epic fresco”, this program, directed by Marcela Saïd and Julien Despaux, highlights the explosion of drug trafficking in France in the mid-2000s, when the country was engulfed in numerous riots.
In this context of revolt, Ourika tells the story of the Jebli family who see their cannabis business collapse after a drug operation. Driss (Adam Bessa), the youngest son of the family, destined for a career in finance, is forced to take charge of the traffic and develop it. But in his business, Driss will have to face William (Noham Edje), a rookie but ambitious police officer, determined to put an end to his actions and go to Morocco to take down his business.
Clément Godart and screenwriter Marine Francou tell us how this series came to be.
“Showing behind the scenes and the evolution of bullyship”
With 25 years of experience in the police and, in particular, in the Anti-Narcotics Office, Clément Godart joined forces in 2019 with his old friend, the rapper Booba, to develop the idea ofOurika.
“At that time I was still in the police and we wanted to show behind the scenes and the evolution of thuggery, the police and the judicial system until today,” specifies the co-creator of the series.
To give resonance to these words, Booba and Clément Godart decided to anchor their story in 2005, when France was shaken by riots after the death of two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, electrocuted in an electrical transformer, where they had hidden to escape. of a police checkpoint in Clichy-sous-Bois.
“The year 2005 is truly a turning point for France and for the world of thugs. Before that time, there were many thieves, but then banditry developed in the drug trade,” explains Clément Godart.
“This corresponds to a historical reality with the change of scale among French traffickers at the time when traffickers with international reach emerged, in these suburbs,” adds Marine Francou, scriptwriter of the series.
“You should know that today our French traffickers are among the largest traffickers in the world and that the police and justice have readjusted to this. That is why it was interesting to shed light on the evolution of this somewhat unknown world and talk about it as as close as possible to reality”, continues Clément Godart.
Infuse realism
For this project, Booba and Clément Godart surrounded themselves with director Marcela Saïd (Narcos: Mexico, Lupine) and Julien Despaux (Paris police 1900) but also the screenwriter Marine Francou, who worked on several seasons of the series gears and whose experience was decisive in providing realism to Ourika.
“As I know a little about the police world thanks to the years I spent at Engrenages, we had common cultural references with Clément,” says the screenwriter.
“He told me about police methods in the fight against drug trafficking and together we tried to integrate these existing police notions into the framework of fiction while remaining intelligible and attractive,” he explains.
Clément Godart also took advantage of his knowledge of the police sector to create the scene ofOurika as precise as possible and avoid falling into “fantasy” or “gender manifestation.”
“‘Ourika’ is not a documentary, but in the series everything is real, whether on the geopolitical level, in the way of working, in the question of ethical and moral problems, on the political level, in justice,” holds the co-creator.
“We are not used to talking in the police, especially in services like the narcotics department. (…) But we were still careful not to go into topics that could put me in a bad position when it comes to security in the work”, however, says Clément Godart.
“The story could continue”
With Ourika, Clément Godart and Marine Francou also wanted to break with the limitations of “urban stories” or “suburban series.” “Ourika tells how this new generation transformed the world at the time and how it continues to transform it today in the vision of commerce, life or family,” indicates the co-creator of the series.
“It is rather a series about a family of traffickers and the parallel rise between one of these traffickers and a police officer. And it has a greater and broader scope than this initial setting that is the suburbs,” says Marina Franco.
While the first season ofOurika Clément Godart has just been released and Marine Francou is already thinking about what will come next. “In the initial idea of Clément and Booba, there are several aspects to continue the great story of the parallel rise of this policeman and this thug, which does not stop at the end of the season,” says the scriptwriter.
And to conclude: “When we see the end of the series, we tell ourselves that the story could potentially continue. But we’ll see, the suspense remains intact.”
Source: BFM TV
