Special Screening: “It’s Hard Being Loved by Jerks” by Daniel Leconte

French filmmaker and writer Daniel Leconte has made a name for himself as the director of such documentaries as The Second Life of Klaus Barbie (1986) and Fidel Castro, The Childhood of the Leader (2004). Today, he is presenting his first film at the Festival in Special Screening: It’s Hard Being Loved by Jerks. It retraces the highly unusual trial in 2007 of Philippe Val, editor-in-chief of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, who was sued by the Paris Mosque, the World Islamic League, and the Union of Islamic Organizations in France for publishing the twelve Danish caricatures which provoked the wrath of Muslims throughout the world.

Pointing out the universal rights at stake in such a trial, Daniel Leconte comments: "Wrongly regarded at the beginning as a purely French case, the trial is very quickly transformed into a universal stake with, at the end, a legal response to attempts by Muslim fundamentalists of imposing their proscriptions by force. After the Idomeneo case in Germany, after the assassination of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands, after the EU renunciation to fight for its principles when, at the height of the Danish cartoons scandal, its embassies were ransacked in the Middle East, this trial is a test for France, for Europe, for every democracy out there."