French cinema is about to celebrate its big party. The Cesar Awards are presented on Friday night, and the day promises to become a moment that will mark the before and after in the history of these awards after the complaints of dozens of actors who claim to have been victims of physical and sexual abuse by of directors several decades older than them.
The French film industry is being shaken by all these complaints and, according to media reports, the actress Judith Godrèche will give a speech at the Olympia in Paris, where the 49th César evening is being held, in a context of freedom of expression around to sexual violence in the seventh art and which will be broadcast live on television.
"Our community suffers in silence. Our young women suffer in silence. And once again, once again, the government is silent, the politicians are silent and the actors, the directors are silent."
Godrèche already sent a powerful message to the public in one of her last interviews, in which she denounced an “omertá” or “law of silence” to which the industry was being subjected. The 51-year-old performer is one of the latest complainants; She herself accused two film directors of rape and sexual abuse when she was just a teenager. “I ended up with him, in his bed, and I was his child wife,” she recalled in an interview with Radio France Inter. “They indoctrinated me, it was like I had joined a cult.”
At the beginning of February, Godrèche filed a formal complaint with the Paris Prosecutor's Office, directly accusing the film director Benoît Jacquot, a prominent French filmmaker 25 years older than her, with whom she had a six-year relationship. The actress was only 14 years old, and she recounts episodes of rape and physical abuse.
In the same way, Godrèche formally denounced the filmmaker Jacques Doillon, whom she accused of having committed sexual abuse while directing a film when she was 15 years old. Doillon, like Jacquot, was twice her age, since he is 28 years older than the interpreter.
"Why does a 44-year-old director create nude love scenes with a 15-year-old girl? Should he have asked her to take off her sweater over and over again? In the name of what: his desire or the cinema?" asks the actress, sharing some frames from the film Les Mendiants (1988) in her Instagram Stories.
"No. It wasn't necessary for me to be shirtless to tell a story. It wasn't necessary for him to grope me. It wasn't necessary for him to repeat the shot over and over again," he says.
Both film directors have categorically denied the accusations, although after Godrèche's testimony, other French actresses have shared their testimonies of sexual abuse and harassment against both filmmakers. Doillon has already stated that she intends to file a defamation complaint against Godrèche.
The actress was also among the personalities who raised their voices in 2017, at the height of the movement's emergence.
From the accusation of rape and sexual assault against the actor Gérard Depardieu to the accusations made by Judith Godrèche, followed by other actresses, sexual violence stalks French cinema more than ever.
