An ambitious spatio-spiritual quest in Baikonur, where yurts and rockets cohabit, faith in science and ancestral superstitions. In Infiniti, a series presented this Saturday out of competition at CanneSeries and broadcast this Monday at 9 p.m. on Canal+, while the International Space Station is no longer responding following a strange accident, several decapitated corpses covered in wax are discovered around the Baikonur cosmodrome . The starting point for a bewitching “cosmic thriller”, as summarized by Stéphane Pannetier and Julien Vanlerenberghe, the creators of the series, that 20 minutes met at the Riviera festival.
“Since our meeting with Julien at the conservatory [Conservatoire Européen d’Écriture Audiovisuelle], we really wanted to work on the space,” says Stéphane Pannetier. And to continue: “The polar was reassuring, particularly on French TV, to be able to allow a digression towards something a little mystical or esoteric. »
“The contrast between the cosmodrome and the steppe”
It was in Guyana, not far from Kourou, that the idea of associating mysticism and space was born. “We discovered the contrast between the jungle that eats away at everything and the extreme technicality of the base and the Kourou spaceport. There is something with all the history of the Maroni river not very far and the shamanic traditions which was of the order of a form – at least from our point of view of metropolitan – of quite exciting esotericism, “explains Stephane Pannier. The problem? At the same time, Canal+ is developing fiction Guyana while Arte prepares maroni.
The two screenwriters transpose their story to Kazakhstan, joined by director Thierry Poiraud (Zone Blanche). “We saw the same contrast between the cosmodrome and the steppe,” rejoices Julien Vanlerenberghe. This duality is embodied by the two heroes, Anna Zarathi (Céline Sallette, intense), a French astronaut “a little prey to the irrational” and in the midst of an existential crisis, recalled by the cosmodrome following the accident and ” the Cartesian cop” Isaak Turgun (Daniyar Alshinov, amazing), “unlike her extremely earthly”, notes Julien Vanlerenberghe. “It was this duality, this opposition in the construction of the characters that also inspired this form of story. »
“Traces of more ancestral religions such as Zoroastrianism”
For their research on space, the two authors meet the astronaut Claudie Haignere, adviser to the director general of the ESA (European Space Agency), and Jean-François Clervoy, astronaut at the ESA and veteran of three missions with NASA, “on board the Challenger shuttle and the MIR station”, specifies Stephane Pannier. “They brought us more anecdotes of life than technical specificities”, points out Julien Vanlerenberge. Claudie Haigneré thus tells Céline Sallette “that she spent the whole trip closing her eyes and that it took her a second time to be able to really enjoy”, reports Julien Vanlerenberge.
In the hostile lands of Kazakhstan, the first elements of the investigation into the bodies decapitated according to a sacrificial ritual, takes the Cartesian cop Isaak Turgun in the footsteps of the worshipers of the religion preached by the prophet Zarathustra. Near Baikonur, “there is an essential presence of Islam, but also traces of more ancestral religions such as Zoroastrianism”, specifies Julien Vanlerenberghe.
It turns out that the victims on earth have the same DNA as the astronauts orbiting the ISS. The astronaut Anna Zarathi and the cop Isaak Turgun will try to solve this paradox. “The idea that governed the project was that we were going to seek to turn as much towards the outer infinity, that of the stars, of the heavens in the Christian sense, but also towards the inner infinity, the multiplicity of our destinies, the tree structure that our lives could have and also the depth of each person’s soul. In this duality of the sign of infinity, we are interested in the place where the lines intersect”, analyzes Julien Vanlerenberghe.
Here are our two heroes embarked on a mobius strip inextricably blending thriller and SF, corruption and shamanism, mysticism and realism. A touching and majestic journey on Earth, to infinity and beyond.