Because the curtain rises on the 77th Cannes Movie Competition, 9 actresses accuse producer Alain Sarde of rape and sexual assault within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, accusations he denies. A brand new wave within the #MeToo tidal wave sweeping French cinema?
That is the journal ELLE who reveals it: 9 girls, most anonymously, accuse French producer Alain Sarde, now 72 years previous, of getting raped or sexually assaulted them after they had been younger actresses, typically minors. The details denounced date again principally to the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties and weren’t the topic of authorized complaints, based on the journal.
Within the absence of complaints and, in the interim, the opening of a judicial investigation, Alain Sarde stays presumed harmless of the details with which he’s accused.
A recurring mode of operation?
On this investigation, 9 testimonies for the prosecution, together with these of the actress sisters Annelise and Clotilde Hesme, to that are added these of Laurence Côte, Caesarized in 1997, and Laurence Cordier.
Different nameless testimonies help the investigation, together with these of two very well-known actresses, together with one nominated for a César, and a well-known actress “from TV collection from the Nineteen Nineties-2000s”. Below the primary identify “Elsa”, the latter confides how Alain Sarde allegedly raped her when she was 15 years previous, in 1985, underneath the pretext of an expert assembly for a task in his non-public house within the eighth arrondissement of Paris.
These actresses declare to have seen their careers come to an entire halt and to have obtained no help from their brokers in whom they often confided. All of them describe an equivalent modus operandi: invites to the producer, makes an attempt at seduction, provided candies and assaults.
Alain Sarde refutes these accusations
In ELLEthe producer’s lawyer, Jacqueline Laffont, who for the reason that journal’s publication has not wished to answer requests from AFP, denies these accusations.lies, which attribute to him behaviors which he disapproves and that are completely overseas to him. (Alain Sarde) refutes them with the best firmness and affirms that he has by no means used the slightest violence or coercion in his relationships with girls whose consent has at all times been important for him.
The producer had already been indicted for “rape” in 1997 in a pimping case involving political, creative and sporting figures in France and internationally. He benefited from a dismissal of the costs nearly two years after being implicated by two younger girls, heard as witnesses within the context of the dismantling of a luxurious prostitution community in Paris.
Alain Sarde began in cinema alongside French actor Jean Yanne. Producer of greater than 200 movies, he notably produced all of Jean-Luc Godard’s movies, but in addition a big a part of these by Jacques Doillon, Coline Serreau and Alain Corneau. He’s additionally the producer of Pianist by Roman Polanski, Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2002.
A competition underneath the signal of #MeToo
The 77th Cannes Movie Competition opens this Could 14 towards a backdrop of rumors linked to #MeToo, in a context of freedom of speech carried specifically by the actress Judith Godrèche, who accused two figures of auteur cinema, Benoît, of rape. Jacquot and Jacques Doillon. The latter will current in official choice at Cannes on Could 15 a brief movie, Me tooproduced with a thousand victims of sexual violence who responded to his name on social networks.
(Re)learn additionally in Terriennes:
César: Judith Godrèche desires to “dream of a doable revolution”
Depardieu affair: feminist mobilization for “a world with out sexist violence”
#MeToo in French cinema: after the phrases of Adèle Haenel, time for justice
French cinema: the César for controversy goes to director Roman Polanski
