AceShowbiz - The creators of The Best Immigrant initially envisioned their Belgian series as science fiction, but reality has rapidly caught up with their dystopian concept. The show, now screening at the international television festival Series Mania, imagines a near future where a far-right party seizes power in Belgium and enacts a law mandating all non-native Belgians to return to their "country of origin."

Amid this harsh new political climate, a local television channel launches a controversial competition show titled The Best Immigrant. In this brutal contest, migrants compete to prove who is the "most worthy" of remaining in the country. The prize is residency, but for those who lose, the consequences are violent deportation.

The idea for the series was conceived in 2018 by writers Raoul Groothuizen and Christina Poppe. They were inspired by the alarming rise of racist rhetoric within the Flemish far-right political scene. Their central question was how far society and the media might go to accommodate an authoritarian regime. "We were writing about people with foreign background getting arrested, put into camps," Groothuizen explains. "We imagined it was dystopian fantasy."

By the time filming began last year, the premise of The Best Immigrant started to feel less like fiction and more like a news report. Series director Michael Abay points to a scene in the first episode depicting police raiding a school and dragging teachers into the street—an image reminiscent of current events in other countries. "Reality caught up with us," he says.

The show’s most extreme concept—a competition where immigrants vie for citizenship—also echoes real-world developments. In May, for example, Duck Dynasty producer Rob Worsoff proposed a reality show to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that he described as "The Biggest Loser for immigration."

Jennifer Heylen, who stars as Mona, one of the unwilling contestants, reflects on how quickly the show’s premise has become normalized. "What we thought was so extreme, just a few years ago, has become normal. The unacceptable has become acceptable," she says. "Five years ago, people would have dismissed [the premise of the show] as impossible. Now they're not even surprised by the idea."

Heylen, the Belgian-born daughter of first-generation immigrants, found the role deeply personal and challenging. "I often use my job to escape my regular life. I play a lawyer, I play a princess," she explains. "Here I'm playing a woman of color living in a racist world. I can't take off that costume when I go home. Jennifer lives in the same world as Mona. I spent three months living in that world at work and then going home to experience it there."

The Best Immigrant premiered on the Belgian streaming platform Streamz in December and immediately provoked backlash from far-right groups. Adil El Arbi, the Belgian director known for Bad Boys: Ride or Die and an executive producer on the series, recalls the reaction. "One of the top figures of the far-right really railed against the show, which actually helped, because everyone started talking about it, it became the number one item on the news," he says. "The fact he was outraged kind of proved our point. If he didn't recognise himself, he wouldn't be so angry."

As The Best Immigrant prepares for its international rollout, handled by Sony Pictures Television and still seeking a U.S. distributor, El Arbi is curious to see how audiences will interpret the show. Will it be viewed as dystopian sci-fi or as a near-documentary drama? "These days, reality is so much crazier and so much more controversial [than fiction]," he notes. "Even dystopia can seem tame by comparison."