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PARIS (AP) — While French cinema enjoys academy awards To draw attention, actors who allege they were teenage victims of physical and sexual abuse by directors decades their senior are shedding light on the repulsive side of the country’s industry.
The last step in #Me too The move could come on Friday at the French film awards.
French media report that Judith Godrèche will give a speech on sexual violence at the César Awards ceremony, France’s version of the Oscars, which will be broadcast live on television.
Godrèche already sent a powerful message to the public through recent interviews in which he denounced an “omerta” in the industry.
It comes when French cinema is expected to shine next month at the Oscar ceremony with Justine Triet The judicial drama Anatomy of a fall.”
Godrèche, 51, is well known among French film buffs. She recently accused two film directors of rape and sexual abuse when she was a teenager. She formally filed a complaint earlier this month, the Paris prosecutor said.
She accuses film director Benoît Jacquot, with whom she had a six-year relationship that began when she was 14, of rape and physical abuse. Jacquot, a prominent director in France, is 25 years her senior.
She also accuses another film director, Jacques Doillon, of sexual abuse while directing a film when she was 15. Doillon is 28 years older than her.
Both Jacquot and Doillon have denied the allegations.
Speaking to France Inter radio earlier this month, Godrèche said she was never attracted to Jacquot, “but I ended up with him, in his bed, and I was his child wife.” Godrèche and Jacquot met in 1986 on the set of their film “The Beggars.”
“They indoctrinated me, it was like I had joined a cult,” he said. The relationship was marred by violence, confinement and control, she said.
Godrèche had previously spoken about her relationship with Jacquot, without naming him, in an autobiographical television program titled “Icon of French Cinema” that premiered in December.
She was among the actors who spoke out in 2017 against the American film producer. Harvey Weinstein in the midst of the #MeToo movement, accusing him of sexual assault when she was 24 years old.
Jacquot told the newspaper Le Monde that he “does not feel directly affected” by the accusations of Godrèche, with whom he said he fell in love at the time. He denied any abuse of authority.
In a statement to the international news agency Agence France-Presse, Doillon said that “just cause does not justify arbitrary complaints, false accusations and lies.”
After Godrèche’s accusations, other women decided to speak out.
Isild Le Besco, 41, accused Jacquot of “psychological and physical violence” in a relationship that began with him when she was 16 and he was 52. She also accused Doillon of having chosen someone else for a role that was supposed to be which he had to play because he rejected his sexual advances.
Another actress, Anna Mouglalis, 45, accused Doillon of sexual assault in 2011.
The French film industry was previously shaken by allegations of sexual misconduct against the actor Gérard Depardieu.
In 2020, Protests by women’s rights activists. were performed during the César Awards ceremony when director Roman Polanski won, in absentia, the award for best director. Actress Adèle Haenel, who reported alleged sexual assault by another French director in the early 2000s when she was 15, stood up and left the room.
Polanski is still wanted in the United States decades after he was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977.