Poisonous seeds
| Television series | |
|---|---|
| German title | Poisonous seeds |
| Original title | Jeux d'influence |
| Country of production | France |
| original language | French |
| year | 2018 |
| length | 61-67 minutes |
| Episodes | 6 in 1 season |
| genre | Drama, thriller |
| Director | Jean-Xavier de Lestrade |
| idea | Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, Antoine Lacomblez |
| script | Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, Antoine Lacomblez, Sophie Hiet , Pierre Linhart |
| production |
Matthieu Belghiti , Jean-Xavier de Lestrade |
| music | Raf Keunen |
| camera | Isabelle Razavet |
| cut | Sophie Brunet |
| Initial release | September 14, 2018 at the La Rochelle Film Festival |
First publication in German |
June 6, 2019 on Arte Mediathek |
| occupation | |
Poisonous Saat (original title: Jeux d'influence ) is a French television miniseries from 2018 about the entanglement of politics, economy, lobbying, money and power in the face of an eco-scandal. It was staged, co-thought and produced by Jean-Xavier de Lestrade , who named the case of a French farmer as a source of inspiration, who sued the Monsanto group for the controversial weed killer glyphosate . The series, which was first broadcast on Arte in Germany and France, can be assigned to the genres of drama, thriller and business crime.
action
The farmer Michel Villeneuve is diagnosed with leukemia . His friend, MP Guillaume Delpierre, suspects the cause of this is the pesticide that Michel has been spraying on his fields for a long time. That is why Guillaume wants to campaign politically for a ban on such pesticides. In order to expand his sphere of influence in this regard, he can be elected as advisor for the relevant agricultural law. Mathieu Bowman, head of the management consultancy named after him, which also advises the agricultural corporation Saskia , hires former parliamentary journalist Claire Lansel as a lobbyist to influence legislation in the interests of Saskia .
Didier Forrest, Marketing Manager at Saskia , used a large amount of cash in Belgium to obtain documents containing the results of a secret study on the human tolerance of the pesticide he was promoting professionally before sending them to his own company address by post. Shortly afterwards, he is found drowned from the Seine . The Kripo assume suicide and tell Didier's family that he had a secret love affair with another woman. Didier's daughter Chloé believes neither the suicide nor the affair with the woman and therefore collects evidence on her own to support this. It becomes clear to the viewer that Mathieu and his assistant Christophe Maillard paid the woman for false statements that she was Didier's lover.
The planned amendment to the agricultural law would lead to the ban of three important, very high-yielding Saskia products, including the herbicide Lymitrol, which Guillaume believes is responsible for a number of human cancer cases in his constituency. Guillaume and his assistant Romain Corso have the researcher Merienne show them the findings of his secret long-term study on the effects of lymitrole and learn that, at least in the test rats, when exposed to even small amounts of lymitrole, tumors develop . Mathieu and Claire try unsuccessfully to buy time and convince Guillaume to postpone the change in the law.
In support of his legislative proposal, Guillaume motivates Michel to sue Saskia because of his cancer . Mathieu offers Michel 300,000 euros in return for a waiver of the lawsuit, later 400,000. In order to put Michel under pressure, Mathieu also prevents him from buying seeds as usual. Mathieu, with Claire's help, goes to great lengths to publicly discredit Merienne and Guillaume, which also affects Guillaume's private life.
Unaware of the explosiveness of the documents, Didier's secretary gave Chloé an insight into the study that her father had sent himself. Mathieu then has Claire Chloé take away the study. Through reading the documents and Chloé's questions, Claire also had doubts about Didier's official cause of death. So she follows Chloé to Middelkerke , Belgium , from where Didier sent the documents, and helps her find the former Saskia researcher Michael Sorensen. His discharge a year ago was related to the study results. He is certain that Didier was murdered because of the same knowledge and also fears for his own life.
With Guillaume's help, Michel justifies his lawsuit against Saskia in a radio interview, with which Guillaume arouses the suspicion of his superior, the Minister of Agriculture. Merienne publishes his research results extensively in a journal, much to the annoyance of Mathieu and Andrew Percy, the Saskia CEO. Bowman responded to the criticism of the Saskia products expressed therein with a public reply from 40 selected scientists. After Guillaume's colleagues within the faction approved the change in the law, Mathieu expresses his displeasure with Prime Minister Roland Kastaing, whom he expected to prevent this from happening. The company Bowman continues to try to hold Guillaume of the amendment by Saskia to used as a supervisory board member supported by Guillaume company, arguing for site closure the company that would cost jobs in his constituency hundreds.
After Chloé has personally accused Andrew of being responsible for Didier's death, he injects Chloé with heroin and, with the help of medical professionals, given him psychiatric treatment. Claire lies to her superiors about the real reason for her trip to Middelkerke and with this and her new love affair with Romain arouses Mathieu and Christophe's mistrust. Scared to death and at Claire's urgent request, Michael gives her the name of the author of the study he has passed on, Eric Vigan. After Andrew catches Claire removing Chloé from the psychiatric ward, it is clear that she is no longer working in the interests of Bowman and Saskia , so Mathieu promptly urges her to sign her immediate resignation with a confidentiality clause.
Claire learns from Eric that he has not glossed over the study, but that he has accepted money from Saskia so that his family will no longer be harassed, monitored and threatened. Michael then stole the study that found a Saskia product had devastating health effects, whereupon he, too, was threatened and monitored. Didier then wanted to buy it back and confront Andrew with what his life cost him. Since Claire and Michael are officially sworn to secrecy, they pass the incriminating information on Saskia and Andrew to Didier's widow Suzanne, who is bringing a lawsuit against the Saskia management , including the murder of Didier.
Mathieu threatens Guillaume and Romain with the disclosure of Romain's role in a long-ago crime and blackmailed Guillaume to postpone the change in the law by two years. He is also forcing Andrew to resign on the murder charge. Michel's lawsuit against Saskia is accepted in court. Guillaume accepts Roland's offer to become the new Minister of Agriculture.
Cast and dubbing
The German dubbed version was produced by Studio Hamburg Synchron GmbH. Susanne Boetius wrote the dialogue book and directed the dialogue .
| actor | Role name | Voice actor | role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alix Poisson | Claire Lansel | Aline Staskowiak | Consultant to the Bowman company , agricultural lobbyist, ex-journalist |
| Laurent Stocker | Guillaume Delpierre | Viktor Neumann | Member of the National Assembly , consultant for the agricultural law |
| Jean-François Sivadier | Mathieu Bowman | Bernd Vollbrecht | Head of the management consultancy firm Bowman , lawyer for the Saskia company |
| Pierre Perrier | Romain Corso | Jannik Endemann | Assistant to Guillaume Delpierre |
| Marilou Aussilloux | Chloé Forrest | Victoria Franz | Daughter of Didier and Suzanne Forrest |
| Christophe Kourotchkine | Michel Villeneuve | Lutz Schnell | Farmer, leukemia patient |
| Marc Citti | Didier Forrest | Thomas Schmuckert | Marketing manager at Saskia , father of Chloé Forrest |
| Thierry Hancisse | Andrew Percy | CEO of the agricultural company Saskia | |
| Guillaume Marquet | Christophe Maillard | Steven Merting | Assistant to Mathieu Bowman |
| Jan Hammenecker | Michael Sorensen | Ben Posener | Former Saskia employee |
| Anne Coesens | Suzanne Forrest | Marion Musiol | Wife or widow of Didier Forrest |
| Francis Leplay | Roland Kastaing | French Prime Minister | |
| Marie Dompnier | Florence Delpierre |
publication
The series premiered on September 14, 2018 at the Festival de la Fiction TV 2018 in La Rochelle . In the French productions competition there, she won the prize for best miniseries. From June 6, 2019, all six episodes were for streaming in the library of the station Arte ready. A week later, on June 13, 2019, Arte began broadcasting the episodes on television. The French-language first broadcast in Switzerland was on May 22, 2019 on RTS Un .
Themes and motifs
In an interview with the French cultural magazine Télérama , director de Lestrade said that the series arose from his idea of telling about the fragility between the political milieu and industrial interests. On the occasion, he also took up the story of a farmer from the Charente department suing Monsanto , which his father had already made him aware of in a newspaper article in 2011.
Recipients also recognized a similarity to the real Monsanto in the fictional Saskia company. In the FAZ, for example, the author Oliver Junge called the series "a fictionalized version that is fictionalized to the point of recognition, but sharpened from a criminalistic point of view" to tell the story of Monsanto and the weed killer glyphosate .
criticism
Critics from the German-speaking media expressed mixed or positive comments about the series.
In the television magazine rtv, for example, Sabine Storch said that the dialogues were as sharp as they were intelligent, that the series was pleasantly factual and that the lobbying was portrayed realistically. The characters have depth, but their relationships are somewhat constructed. The portrayal of women is out of date, as only two "made it beyond the supporting role of the caring wife" and "were then drawn in cold blood and unsympathetically".
In the FAZ , the critic Oliver Junge regretted that the director did not use the fictionalization of the story about glyphosate and Monsanto to “undermine expectation, but to exaggerate the good-bad distribution.” This made the series a “settlement "And" a six-hour trend piece "that has very good arguments in favor of ecocide , but also narrative weaknesses, including" all too astonishing successes "in obtaining information from the main character Claire Lansel. The work could be “extremely exciting”, “if the political-economic tug of war [...] is depicted with some complexity”.
The latter aspect was similarly praised by the critic Astrid Ebenführer in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard and recommended the series mainly because it did not create an "all too simple good-bad scenario" and the "toxic connections between the protagonists [...] in the course of the History turned out to be far more poisonous than one would initially suspect.
Web links
- Poisonous seed in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Poisonous seeds at Fernsehserien.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Poisonous seeds. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing file , accessed on June 26, 2019 .
- ↑ a b cf. Credits of the episodes
- ↑ a b Sabine Storch: Review: Poisonous Saat , in: rtv from June 13, 2019, accessed on June 26, 2019
- ^ Festival de la Fiction TV: Prix du Festival. Retrieved June 28, 2019 (French).
- ↑ Release Info , in: IMDb , accessed on June 26, 2019
- ^ "Jeux d'influence", la série qui s'intéresse aux lobbies , in: Bluewin of May 22, 2019, accessed on June 26, 2019
- ↑ Emilie Gavoille: Sur le tournage de “Jeux d'influence”, la série qui sonde le lobby des pesticides , in: Télérama of August 18, 2018, updated on June 14, 2019, accessed on June 26, 2019
- ↑ a b Oliver Jungs: Ackern für den Ökozid , in: FAZ from June 13, 2019, accessed on June 26, 2019
- ↑ Astrid Ebenführer: "Poisonous Saat" on Arte: Lobbying for Murderers , in: Der Standard from June 22, 2019, accessed on June 26, 2019