3% is a Brazilian series distributed by Netflix, and it deserves a warning before anything else: it is visually unlike anything you have seen. Pure dystopian science fiction with social teeth and a lot of psychological tension.
Brazil is not a country you associate with science fiction, and this series does not care. It is post-apocalyptic: a near future where only three per cent of a population sunk in poverty and anarchy gets to join a privileged society, the elite, after passing through a hellish selection process designed to pick the best. The series shows instead of explains, sketching the anarchic world of the majority and the myth of the other side, where the three per cent lives.
The same thing happens to me whenever I watch something that is not North American: you feel a different texture immediately. It happened with the South African Charlie Jade and the Swedish Real Humans, and it happens here. 3% is an endless, monstrous, twisted version of the Gromhölm method, a diabolical selection designed to choose the most capable, with the word capable doing all the work.
If you liked the selection scenes in 11.4 light dreams, you should enjoy 3% more than you expect. The concept is very close.
Keep reading: Better than us, Real humans and Black Mirror.
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