Series Mania 2024: Niels Schneider investigates a troubled past in The World Does Not Exist

In French competition at Séries Mania, Le Monde n'existe pas features a journalist investigating a murder in the village of his childhood. With a very intense Niels Schneider.

Four years after the publication of Fabrice Humbert's novel, Erwan Le Duc (Partridge, Her Father's Daughter) adapts The world does not exist in a mini-series. We follow Adam Vollmann (Niels Schneider), Parisian journalist in the web editorial team of a major national daily: one morning, he discovers astounded that a certain Axel Challe is the number 1 suspect in the case of the murder of a young girl. woman, in a village in Pas-de-Calais. But Axel, who has disappeared since the events, is not just anyone: Adam knows him well since they were friends and grew up together in the same place. The reporter then decides to go there as a special correspondent, in order to discover the truth…

If the plot of the book took place in a town in the United States, Erwan Le Duc made the rather clever choice of transposing the action in the north of France. He takes the opportunity to film territories that are too little explored by fiction and bring to life secondary characters full of humor and drama (the local journalist who is as obsessive as she is funny; the guy from the media library whose camera continuously captures the void absolute of the town).

Schneider, remarkably intense, plays this man who reluctantly returns to the traces of a complicated past: we quickly understand that the teenage Adam Vollmann suffered physical and moral harassment which left scars. Too effeminate for the local bullies and above all too close to the famous Axel, whom he refuses to see as an assassin…

This violence and its consequences are the main subject of the mini-series, and this is unfortunately where it gets bogged down a little (let's point out that we were only able to see the first two episodes, out of four in total). The mystery surrounding Axel's guilt almost takes a back seat, leaving only the confrontations between Adam and his former tormentors, most of whom have become integrated members of the community. Significant scenes (the main character's suppressed anger in the face of these men who don't even recognize him) but which force the plot to stall. The character study may be fascinating, but we would like The world does not exist shakes up its formula a bit in its final two episodes.

The World Does Not Exist will be broadcast soon on Arte. The first two episodes are available for 48 hours on the Séries Mania website.