Festivals - Canneseries 2020: Moloch: An original, compelling and successful fantasy series

By Mulder, 10 october 2020

"For me, fantasy is like poetry. It must necessarily speak of what we live, of reality, but thanks to the detour, the side step. This parallel is important for me, because it allows access to emotion or meaning, without being didactic. We can understand the world through fantastic poetry, fear, sensation, dreams. On mourning, the way to find oneself or to express one's anger, the supernatural is the extension of an emotion, which envelops and amplifies it. " - Arnaud Malherbe

Moloch is a series created and directed by Arnaud Malherbe and co-written with Marion Festraets. This series will be broadcasted on Arte on Thursdays, October 22nd and 29th, 2020 at 8:55 pm and in its entirety on ARTE.TV from October 15th to November 27th. It is currently being presented as part of the Canneséries 2020 festival. This bewitching thriller by Arnaud Malherbe (Chefs, Belleville Story) is carried by the duo Olivier Gourmet and Marine Vacth.

Suicides? Murders ? Supernatural phenomena ? Soon, on the walls of a port city, six letters will spread out of fire, "Moloch", as a signature. While the company seems to be on fire, Louise and Gabriel embark on a journey to the heart of their personal hell to unravel the mystery. On their sinuous path, they will come across a loving cop (Arnaud Valois), an editor eager for the latest scoop (Laurent Capelluto) or a bus driver victim of hallucinations (Marc Zinga).

Arnaud Malherbe signs an ambitious series, black and fantastic, which questions our relationship to impunity and the violence of a fractured society. Sublimated by the cold and stylized photography of a coastal city marked by the stigmas of industrialization, the characters embodied by Olivier Gourmet and Marine Vacth struggle between their demons and the violence of those who have decided to take justice into their own hands. The mystery of these combustions that spread throughout the city will lead them to form an atypical team to glimpse the truth, but at what price?

We were able to discover within the framework of the festival Canneséries the first two episodes:

Synopsis : Episode 1
On the eighth floor of a tower, a man catches fire in the middle of the crowd. Louise, a young trainee journalist, invites herself among the police officers to obtain information. Gabriel, a respected psychiatrist, but devastated by the grief of his child, takes on a difficult patient: Jimmy. A bus driver, the man has repeated absences. Every night, he voluntarily burns himself with the flame of his stove to atone for his faults, according to the precepts of a religion that he applies to the letter. Louise learns that the first victim was consulting Gabriel while a woman caught fire in a park in front of her child.

Synopsis: Episode 2
The police hid the second tragedy from the media. At the wake of the first victim, Louise approached Gabriel posing as a grieving cousin. When she asked for an appointment, the psychiatrist, suspicious, redirected her to a colleague. Although her boss has forbidden her to work on the subject, Louise persists and learns of the existence of the second victim. She invites herself into Gabriel's office to get more information. A third man, a supermarket manager, burns. On the front of the store, an unknown hand paints the name "Moloch" in red letters.

About the main characters:

Gabriel (Olivier Gourmet): A respected, gentle and empathetic psychiatrist, Gabriel was violently shaken by the death of his young son in tragic circumstances a few years earlier. Grief digs an insidious wound in his life as a couple, but he is a doctor devoted to his patients, of which the first man who burst into flames was a part. With Louise, a young journalist, at his side, the dialogue is not self-evident, but dog and cat will manage to tame themselves to form a united duo in the ordeal.

Louise (Marine Vacth): Louise left the suffocating and dysfunctional cocoon of her bourgeois family at a very young age to embrace a life of revolt and excess. Now an upstart and unstable young adult, journalism seems to suit her stubbornness, but she needs to prove herself. She will stop at nothing to get a scoop, even if it means using unsavory methods. Solitary, stubborn and withdrawn, she doesn't trust anyone, except perhaps Gabriel, this enigmatic psychiatrist who is not so easily manipulated...

Tom (Arnaud Valois): Tom is a gentle and conscientious policeman. If his first encounter with Louise, whom he ruthlessly evicts from a crime scene, is not the ideal setting for a romance, the young cop will soon be led to see her again. In the course of the investigation, and as everyone sinks into the paranoia caused by Moloch, the same question haunts the brief hours he shares with the young woman: what is Louise after? Him, or the information he holds?

Jimmy (Marc Zinga): Jimmy, a young bus driver, is a severely troubled patient of Gabriel. He is a victim of repeated absences, as if he had suddenly been dispossessed of his own body. Is he crazy? His insomnia leaves him gnawed by doubt and anxiety. To atone for his faults, he mutilates himself, burning his flesh in the flames of the gas stove. Are these the orders of the television preacher, whose fiery speeches animate the modest suburban apartment? Or is it a deeper evil that animates him?

You can discover today and until tomorrow 3:00 pm on the official website of Canneseries for free the first two episodes of this excellent and new series: https://screeningroom.canneseries.com/film/moloch/.

Synopsis :
A peaceful town on the seaside, its grey walls sprawling, mazelike. Strangers burst into flames, brutally, wildly, inexplicably... Spontaneous combustion? Suicide by immolation ? Pyrotechnic homicides ?

Moloch (2019; 6 episodes)
Directed by Arnaud Malherbe
Produced by Xavier Matthieu
Written by Arnaud Malherbe and Marion Festraëts
Starring Olivier Gourmet, Marine Vacth, Arnaud Valois, Marc Zinga, Alice Verset, Soufiane Guerrab, Jan Hammenecker, Julie-Anne Roth, Laurent Capelluto
Music by Flemming Nordkrog
Cinematography : Christophe Nuyens
Edited by Floriane Allier, Aurique Delannoy
Production companies : ARTE France, CALT Studio, Belga Productions
Release date : October 22, 2020 (Arte) (France)
Running time : 52 minutes

(Source : Press kit)