Boho Debuts at Canneseries, Celebrates Imperfect Women
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- "Boho" debuted at Canneseries, created by Abbie Boutkabout and directed by Olympia Allaert, following Kima, her sister Nawal and friend Alex as Kima rejects family pressure to settle down and rediscovers her love of dancing
- Banijay Rights handles international sales, with the show currently streaming on Belgian platform Streamz; cast includes Serine Ayari, Ikram Aoulad and Miss Angel
- Boutkabout and producer Helen Perquy said one of the three main characters was originally written as white, but they scrapped the idea because "the power of this show is that you see three friends," choosing to focus on identity over difference
- Boutkabout, a daughter of immigrants, said she had "never seen main characters who look like me, talk like me or have the same family issues" and invoked Riz Ahmed's speech on why under-represented stories must be written from within
- The series was originally much darker, shaped by the pandemic and Boutkabout's entry into motherhood, until producers steered her toward humor as a "counterweight" — Allaert calling the final tone "a warm blanket in hard times"
- Perquy positioned "Boho" alongside Belgian dystopian series "Arcadia" and "The Big Fuck Up" as proof Flanders can "lead the way" in European TV, while warning that "the creative window is narrowing" and "the 'old white man' is back"
Why it matters: The show is a deliberate bet that international buyers will pick up a female-led, non-white, Flemish-language comedy at a moment when Perquy herself argues the industry's creative window is closing — making Boho both a sales pitch and a test case for whether European TV can sustain auteur-driven projects outside established formats.
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