*Mini series / First Person

What's Left of The American Dream?

All Identities Combined

30/04/2026

Walid Hajar Rachedi
Growing up in the suburbs of Paris, Walid was shaped by contradictory images of the United States: TV shows, hip-hop, and stories where outsiders could still win — but also the wars of an interventionist power entering the family living room through the screen. In Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr.’s city, a “Black Mecca,” and a new immigrant gateway, he confronts this childhood imaginary with America today. His stay takes place as Donald Trump returns to power, in a country more divided than ever over what it claims to stand for.
 A bilingual documentary series driven by one question: what’s left of the American Dream — and for whom did it ever truly exist?


Prologue

Before it was a country, America was first a light for Walid. Projected into his child’s eyes by a white-edged cathode-ray television set, in the Val-de-Marne.

It was not yet a dream. But it was already a refuge: the world of TV shows, cartoons, ordinary heroes who, one day, are given the chance to reveal who they truly are. Then, one evening in January 1991, the programme is interrupted. Baghdad appears on screen, war enters the family living room, and history stops having only one version.

Later would come hip-hop, the aftermath of 9/11, the first trip to New York, Obama, Trump. And one question that never went away: what remains of that childhood light Walid had mistaken for America?

You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and your favorite podcast platform.


Episode #1 – Black America

Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Michael Johnson. Then Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, hip-hop, and Boyz n the Hood. As a teenager, Walid became fascinated by the America of Black icons: voices, bodies, style, and an energy capable of turning style into language, anger into power, and struggle into a global imaginary.

In Atlanta, with curator and historian T.K. Smith and artist Fahamu Pècou, one question comes into focus: what does it mean to carry a culture celebrated everywhere, when real equality remains contested at home?

From the Great Migration to Ferguson, from Obama to Trump’s return, Black America explores the paradox of a Black culture at the heart of the American Dream’s imagination — yet still kept at a distance from its promise.


Episode #2 : License to Belong
Out May 12th 2027

Episode #3 : Nuevo South
Out May 19th 2027.

Episode #4 : Betting on Us
Out May 26th 2027


A bilingual documentary mini-series by Walid Hajar Rachedi, with editorial and production support by Ryad Maouche and Laura Taouchanov.

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