Originally from Lamalou-les-Bains, the young actor appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world in a photo taken on Sunday January 11, 2015. An image that has become the symbol of the defense of freedom of expression. Ten years later, what remains of the momentum of unity and fraternity that guided the French during the march in reaction to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the kosher grocery store in Vincennes? Midi Libre asked him.
It was 10 years ago. Charles Bousquet, originally from Lamalou-les-Bains, arrived in the capital only 3 months before the attacks of January 2015, unwittingly becoming a symbol of freedom of expression throughout the world.
“I was in the cinema, I got into a school”he remembers. The day after January 7, 2015, shaken by the horror of the events, he participated like millions of people in France in the great republican and fraternal march organized in reaction to the Charlie Hebdo killings and the dark hours that followed. “No one told us to go. It was a popular movement, as if we all felt it deep down. There was this need to defend a common cause. It was beautiful, this unity of people to come together. beat against everything that had happened that week.”
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“This photo belongs to the country, to history”
To get an overview of this moment which promises to be historic, the young man climbs up, with a few others, onto the statue erected on Place de la Nation, “The Triumph of the Republic”. “There were so many people. It was no longer possible to go back down. I stayed there for several hours.” At the end of the afternoon of this Sunday, January 11, 2015, a photographer from the Reuters agency, Stéphane Mahé, took an image which will make the front pages of the biggest newspapers, Le Monde, Le Times… Charles Bousquet, perched on the arm of the statue, brandishes a long pencil lent by his neighbor, while a tricolor flag completes the composition of this widely distributed shot, the resemblance of which with the painting by Eugène Delacroix will be noted “Liberty leading the people”.
“All of this is still due to chance”
“This photo belongs to the country, to the people who made it an iconic image, to its author, to history”analyzes, with hindsight, the thirty-year-old who was the center of attention for several days, at the end of the demonstration. “Just after, I went home, I watched the news, and I saw Nagui on France 2 who was presenting the next day’s headlines…” He then discovered himself as a symbol of the fight for freedom of expression. Answers questions from journalists curious to know who this young man is… “It’s not difficult to wear because for me, this photo represents all of the demonstrators. That I am the standard bearer of the movement makes me proud but it’s something that is beyond me. All that is when even due to chance I had to have one, it was me and it’s a great source of pride.”
“There was a fervor in each of us but it lasted a week…”
Did this moment change the course of things? “There was a before, an after, but not in continuity”he regrets. “For my generation, which had not experienced huge crises, it showed a unity of the country, beyond religions, beyond politics. That the people knew how to come together in the face of a common enemy. We were all there, in a utopia, there was a fraternal, friendly side, a fervor in each of us But it lasted a week, that’s the problem…”.
“It is important today that this photo is transmitted to future generations: so as not to forget that we came together to safeguard freedom of expression, that is the strength of our country. When we see the religious obscurantism, it is important that this photo persists, that this message is transmitted because with time everything passes, we must not forget.
A young actor awakened to the defense of causes
This month of January 2015 awakened the militant side of Charles Bousquet. “It awakened in me the desire to educate myself on freedom of expression and fighting for causes.” The Lamalousian has also become a defender of the animal cause. “We cannot go through life just by being a spectator of the world”he believes. Actor but also director, he will appear in 2025 in the Netflix series Young Millionaires. On the other side of the camera, after a film shot at Lake Salagou, he is working on another project, alongside a producer from Sète. For the record, Charles Bousquet, whose family still lives in Lamalou-les-Bains, rescued a couple in their seventies stuck in their campervan swept away by the waters of the Bitoulet, during the floods of September 2014. “I left the South with a bang. And arrived in Paris with a bang”he said.
