Documentary about the Charlie Hebdo massacre wants us to refocus on the principles at stake
A father-and-son team of filmmakers want to rescue the Charlie Hebdo debate from the trivia they think has made us lose sight of the importance of what happened
The attack on in January left 12 dead and 11 injured, a massacre carried out by Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, brothers who were linked to al-Qaeda in Yemen. A movement gathered, bringing four million French people to the streets in the days following the attack. Donations of at least US$18 million, in what called "tragedy money", have flowed in from supporters since.
These events are covered in a new documentary, , which premiered at the Toronto film festival earlier this month. Directed by father-and-son team Daniel and Emmanuel Leconte, the film reuses clips from Daniel's previous documentary, , to introduce the staff - including prominent cartoonists Charb, Cabu, Wolinski and Tignous, who were killed - to a wider audience. Footage of the dead working, arguing, singing karaoke in their downtime is cut together with eyewitness accounts from the survivors of the attack.
"It was the first time I'd heard a gunshot," says cartoonist Corinne Rey (known as "Coco"), who survived after being forced at gunpoint to let the masked attackers into the packed conference room. "It's a really shitty noise. Nothing at all like the movies. Just 'tak-tak'."
Everybody's asking: 'Is it politically correct to say this? Can we show the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo? What are they doing with the money?' What are you guys talking about?
Emmanuel Leconte says he and his father were keen to bring the attention back to the staff of the magazine. He believes the fundamental point - that no one deserves to die for exercising their right to free speech - has been lost in the debate since. "We have to put the focus back on them," he says. "Everybody's asking: 'Is it politically correct to say this? Can we show the cartoons of ? What are they doing with the money?'
"What are you guys talking about? It's a distraction. Everybody dived into that because they couldn't cope with what happened."
"It was obviously part of a plan," he says. "You attack a whole nation by attacking an element of culture - something that's emblematic of an open society - such as Charlie Hebdo; attacking the police force, an institution; and attacking the Jews."
staff have not let the attack dilute the assertiveness - or, depending on your view, the offensiveness - of their work. In their latest issue, they include a selection of "the covers you were spared". Among them two pictures that play on the image of the drowned Syrian toddler, Aylan Kurdi, to mock Europe's adoption of the photos of his body as a totem for the migrant crisis. One shows Aylan, face down in the sand next to a billboard for McDonald's - a Banksy-esque comment on the selling of consumerism to the poor. The other, published under the headline "The Proof That Europe is Christian" showed Jesus walking on water next to a drowning boy. The caption reads: "Christians walk on water; Muslim children sink."
There has been outrage, especially in Britain and the US. But French journalists claimed the target of the cartoons' satire had slipped in translation and the magazine's artists protested that the joke had been misunderstood. "Buy yourself a brain," illustrator Coco said to Society of Black Lawyers chairman Peter Herbert after he called the magazine "a purely racist, xenophobic and ideologically bankrupt publication". In truth, no amount of explanation from the staff is going to quell the outcry over the use of that image in their work, even if the outrage strengthens their point.
Emmanuel believes this kind of reaction is why many people who became part of the "Je Suis Charlie" movement have found themselves conflicted over whether they "are Charlie" any more. "People rallied around emotion with ," he says. " loves to take the piss out of emotion as well. I think people are going to realise: 'I supported them, and now they're making fun out of this?'"
The magazine has always ridiculed the sacred, he says. "You can't make a deal with freedom of speech by saying: 'Listen, guys. I support you as long as you say this, this and this.' That's the wrong newspaper to do that with. They're taking the piss out of everything. It's just that the targets they are taking the piss out of have become more and more violent and out of hand."
Daniel Leconte's previous film, , quizzed the late illustrators about the court case brought against them by the Muslim World League and the Union of French Islamic Organisations, which claimed the publication was racist. The magazine's then editor, Philippe Val, was acquitted after the court ruled the magazine was ridiculing terrorists, not Islam.
was an intellectual exercise, says Leconte. is very much an emotional one.
"Killing cartoonists is killing France," he says. "It's as if people felt like the fundamental values of the country were going to be strong forever. The shootings made them feel they weren't."
It is this that brought the millions into the streets, he says. "Four million people on the streets was the most important demonstration since the liberation of Paris. But it's going to play a big role in the reaction against fundamentalism. [The killers] touched on something very deep in the French culture and the French identity."
At 's Toronto premiere, there are two special guests: the current managing editor, Laurent "Riss" Sourisseau, and Eric Portheault, the magazine's finance manager. Both saw their colleagues killed, but survived the attacks.
Before they take to the stage at the Bloor Street Hot Docs cinema, armed police are stationed in the lobby and at the back of the screening room. Riss addresses the crowd. "It's always been hard to make ," he says. "The events of January put our backs to the wall. We were wondering: 'Could we continue?' It became a real political struggle. But we want to continue to erase what the terrorists tried to do."
The Guardian
