"This documentary is a way of putting history right side up", confided the director. Monday January 25, 2021, Hugues Nancy was invited on the set of C to you, sure France 5, to defend his next documentary, Charlie, the newspaper that didn't want to die, broadcast Tuesday January 26 on France 2. For the first time since the attacks on the famous satirical newspaper, the survivors of the editorial staff, including those who had never spoken before, testify in front of the camera of the hell experienced during this tragic day of January 7 2015. Riss, resident of Charlie hebdo for over thirty years, also recounts the dramatic consequences that this event had on his own life. However, the latter does not give up. Just like his former colleagues still alive, the editor comes to his office every day whose walls have been fitted with multiple safety devices.
Security systems, airlocks … Charlie hebdo became a "bunker"
Kept in secret and under high police protection, the address of Charlie hebdo is nowhere to be found and their premises impenetrable. Only one man was able to enter the walls of the newspaper: Hugues Nancy, therefore, responsible for retracing its history from its creation until this key date of September 2, 2020, the first day of the extraordinary trial of the attacks against Charlie Hebdo. Exclusively for C to you, the director has agreed to share some preview images. "Is the atmosphere impressive enough?", Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine asks her guest. "It's quite surprising … There are a lot of airlocks, a lot of security systems, it's impossible to access without being invited.", explains Hugues Nancy.
On the images broadcast by C to you, viewers were able to discover the interior of the offices of Charlie hebdo. The editors are all gathered there on the same floor, after a series of corridors and codes of all kinds. Windows can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and its placed at exceptional heights to prevent any intrusion. However, the newspaper crew managed to bring back some human warmth to what the director dubbed "the bunker" : "For spending time there, there is a rather friendly working atmosphere, we feel that they have made this place their own. Although I imagine that for them, at first, it was painful... ", he confides. When the presenter asks her if we feel "the fear that it could start again", the director transcribes the words of the survivors of Charlie : "The fear we live with, but we cannot live with it every day. Otherwise life is unbearable."
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