A graduation speech is usually one filled with optimism, hope, and gratitude, but when AgroBioTech student Mathias Bossel (Léo Legrand) takes to the stage as major de promotion at the beginning of six-part French language thriller After Us, his message is far from positive. Despite topping his class, Mathias is outraged by the institution’s association with what he believes are corrupt corporations, and as he rips his newly-conferred degree into tiny pieces in front of his family and friends, there’s a sense that Mathias has a bigger plan for his future.
It is only his mentor and teacher, Professor Jean Humbel (François Berléand), who retains Mathias’ respect, and following the ceremony, Humbel encourages his student with the words of American anthropologist Margaret Mead: “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” Though clearly intended as an affirmation of the importance of striving for a common goal, and a means to provide his protégé with reassurance, the professor could never anticipate just how literally the young man before him will take his words.
Mathias’ act of protest is not without context. The anticipated BEE Forum, a meeting of powerful European corporations in the French alpine city of Annecy, hailed as the coming together of climate science and corporate powerhouses, is just days away. It is set to be the stage for the launch of the controversial Ice Back campaign, marketed as a glacier protection project that repurposes excess carbon dioxide, funded by four of Europe’s most notable CEOs. For Mathias, his sister Éloïse (Marie Colomb), and friends Nina (Alva Schäfer), James (Will Attenborough), Alma (Catalina del Rosario) and Elias (Gaël Langouët), who make up the radical climate activist group Phoenix, however, the forum, and the controversial scheme, is nothing more than greenwashing in its purest form.
Cassandra Sanchez (Jacqueline Curado), a Spanish fast fashion mogul, Hans Frankenheimer (Benno Fürmann), the CEO of German chemical company Saxechem, Amaury de Montchanin (Arnaud Viard), head of hydrocarbon and freeways giant Dedal, and British banker William Barker (Jonathan Nyati), are the aforementioned four behind the Ice Back campaign. For the members of Phoenix, they are also the most culpable individuals on the continent, representing each of the damaging and destructive contributors to the crisis facing the planet. That said, they are also the four who hold the power, influence, and capital required to fund significant climate action.
In an attempt to make a powerful statement of protest, and gain the attention of the world, Phoenix decide to hit these influential corporate figureheads of the forum where they believe it will hurt most. The urgency of the climate crisis must be met with equal pressure and force, and the decision to kidnap the children of these giants of business is the pinnacle of this European-wide allegiance’s plan. Their demands? That the twelve billion dollars intended for Ice Back be donated instead to Climate Shield, the foundation headed up by none other than Professor Jean Humbel.
What starts as an impressively well-coordinated operation to extract the adult children of these powerful individuals from various locations across Europe, and keep them hidden in an abandoned summer camp not far from Annecy itself, quickly hits a few snags. To start, it is William Barker’s six-year-old daughter who is taken hostage instead of her older brother, a moment of improvisation that heightens the stakes of the operation almost immediately. Then, there is the detective who unexpectedly tails Mathias, the unpredictability of the hostages, the secrets within the group itself, and the very real possibility that they may not get the result they are hoping for.
In spite of all this, it’s clear that, whatever happens, Mathias and his comrades won’t go down without a fight. In addition to a shared belief in the importance of protecting the planet, the members of Phoenix all have their own reasons for sticking it to those who put their own wealth above humanity and its home. Each are navigating complex emotions - grief, anger, guilt, frustration, and an overwhelming sense of responsibility, to name a few - but this is, above all else, a generational fight for survival, and one that they believe is far greater than whatever has individually brought them to this point.
After Us is a series with its eyes firmly fixed on the future, but immersed in the frustration that accompanies the inaction of the present. With the hostages in their grasp, the possibility of significant, climate-altering money on the line, and their moment in the spotlight fading fast, how far the group will go to get their message heard is pushed to the extreme. Do the rules of right and wrong still stand when the future of the planet is on the line? And could the very real environmental threat brewing just outside the camp mean that they are already too late?
After Us is now streaming at SBS On Demand.
