‘Tribes Of Europa’: New German Netflix Series Is A Violent Dystopian Ride

Tribes of Europa is a new German Netflix
NFLX
NFLX
original series available to stream on the platform from February 19. It is a strange, and rather ridiculous, ride through a dystopian future with scenes of extreme violence. The series has already entered Netflix’s Top 10 shows across the world a day after its release

Tribes of Europa takes place in the near future. It is the year 2074. Following a mysterious global disaster, countries that constituted Europe no longer exist. Feudal tribes have emerged instead, waging war against each other. The six-part series follows three siblings, Kiano (Emilio Sakraya), Liv (Henriette Confurius) and Elja (David Ali Rashed), who find themselves separated after their tribe, the peaceful Origines living in harmony with nature, is attacked by the Crows, a deadly tribe whose members prefer wearing the color black and splattering black eyeshadow across their faces. Kiano, Liv and Elja are now forced to forge their own paths to survive in this new war-torn Europa.

This is yet another series that recalls shows such as The Hunger Games or even Games of Throne with its raw violence, bloodshed and tribal rivalries, without really being on a par with them. Produced by Wiedemann & Berg, the team behind the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others and the critically-acclaimed Netflix original series Dark, Tribes of Europa though feels closer to The 100 with its similar young adult post-apocalyptic vibe.

As the first episode opens, the three siblings are out in the woods hunting, when an aircraft comes crashing down near them. Curious, they go see what it is. They find an empty aircraft with no pilot in sight. Elja, the youngest, finds a metal cube on the ground nearby and takes it with him. The siblings eventually find the wounded pilot and take him back to their tribe to heal him. He is an Atlantian, a technologically advanced tribe.

The Origine tribe is soon attacked by a group of Crows, who are searching for the Atlantian and in particular, a certain cube. As the Crows butcher the whole village of the Origine, Elja manages to escape after the Atlantian gives him the cube and sends him on a special mission. Believing his family to all be dead, Elja goes first on a journey, with the help of comic-relief Moses (Oliver Masucci), to find a way to repair the Atlantian cube.

Meanwhile, Liv, who was left for dead, must now find her father and her brothers, and is relentless in her pursuit, uniting with the Crimson Republic, a military group which used to be the European Eurocorps army, to get to the Crow metropolis. Kanio, however, seems to have drawn the short straw compared to his siblings. Captured to become a slave in the ultra-violent Crow metropolis, he is then chosen by one of the Lords to be her sex slave. How will the siblings ever find each other?

The reasons why or how European countries no longer exist in this series is never really fully explained. The characters keep referring to a “Black December”, but no one seems to know what happened. All advance technology such as smartphones and computers have disappeared. The series thus suggests that without technology our civilization would crumble and revert back to feudal tribalism. But, even 45 years without technology or the film and TV industry, English has remained the second language that everyone speaks.

The inspiration for Tribes of Europa, according to creator Philip Koch, arose the day that the British population voted to leave the EU in the 2016 Brexit Referendum. Koch was so “shocked” by the Brexit decision that he spontaneously wrote the concept to this new series, and imagined a post-apocalyptic future in which all the European countries had been destroyed.

Whatever the reasons for the destruction of European countries the creator and writers of the show will decide on, the series feels problematic when considering Europe’s war-torn history. There is therefore something that does not quite sit well with the concept of this show, especially with some of its extremely brutal scenes of gladiator-style bloodshed, torture and sexual violence, turned into some form of entertainment.