Riss

Portrait of a unique weekly magazine that, for more than fifty years, has been shaking up French society by confronting it with its taboos and unspoken truths.

This new documentary by the father-and-son directing team of Daniel and Emmanuel Leconte pays tribute to the 11 journalists of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo who were killed in the January 2015 attack by radical Islamic extremists.

The murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist in 2004, followed by the publishing of twelve satirical cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed that was commissioned for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, provides the incendiary framework for Daniel Leconte's provocative documentary, It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks.

Riss conducts an investigation into the notion of blasphemy, the place of the representation of the divine, and humour in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The film is made up of sequences and interviews, animations of Riss's drawings and archive footage.

Riss conducts an investigation into the notion of blasphemy, the place of the representation of the divine, and humour in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The film is made up of sequences and interviews, animations of Riss's drawings and archive footage.