The trial for sexual assault of French actor Gérard Depardieu postponed to March 2025

While awaiting the court’s decision, the spectacle and repercussions of the case remind at all times, in the written press, radio and television, the exceptional seriousness of cases of harassment, rape and sexual assault in French cinema, with the case Depardieu as a fetid “badge” of a serious social cancer.

This Monday the accusations of two women were to be tried, during a filming, in 2021, of the film ‘The Green Blinds’, by the director Jean Becker. The testimonies reproduced by different media are of a fierce sexist vulgarity. Before removing the women’s clothes, in a rude manner, the performer pulled down his pants, grabbing his virile member, making statements like this: “I can make you cum without touching you.” Violent attacks continued.

The case of the attacks during ‘The Green Blinds’ is only the first to be judged. There are other earrings, among a rosary of dozens of complaints by judicially prescribed actions.

In 2018, the actress Charlotte Arnold filed a complaint for sexual harassment. In 2023, thirteen women published their testimonies in various media during the filming of eleven films, between 2004 and 2022. At the end of 2023, three more complaints occurred and complaints for rape and sexual assault. On Christmas of the same year, a devastating documentary was aired about the actor’s behavior with women. At the beginning of this year, a decorator and assistant director They reported new attacks. Last August, a new process was announced, on an undetermined date.

In total, twenty-one women have made public their testimonies about obscene behavior, sexual assault and rape, in several cases. Depardieu answers such accusations, declaring victim of a “persecution.”

French #MeToo

At the end of 2023, Depardieu went from being a “sacred monster” to an “infamous, obscene monster.” With a dramatic aggravation: his case was well known in all media in the film industry. Fabien Onteniente, who directed Depardieu in the film ‘Disco’, acknowledges that everyone knew and remained silent: “Around 2007, my casting director warned me, telling me Gerard behaves with women in an unworthy manner…” The Depardieu case was breaking out, and he was forced to abandon several tours as a singer: groups of young and younger women waited for them at the doors of cinemas and theaters to scold him in a bad way.

For a year now, Depardieu’s films have disappeared from cinemas. Their albums have stopped selling. Her case has unearthed other cases of sexual harassment and violence.

Last March, actors Aurélien Wiik (43 years old) and Francis Renaud (56 years old) launched the movement #MeTooGarçons (#MeTooChicos), to discover and report attacks in French cinema against underage boys and girls. The movement has begun to grow.

Last summer the film directors were arrested and interrogated Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillonaccused by the actress Judith Godrèche of sexual harassment and violence. Justice prepares its cases for a predictable process.

These are parallel but very symptomatic processes, which the Depardieu case illuminates with a light as disturbing as it is disturbing for the French film industry, which the actress Anouk Grinberg describes in this way: «When the producers hired Depardieu to work on a film they knew that they hired a sexual offender. And they didn’t care.

Depardieu is the highest-profile figure to face accusations in the version of the French cinema of the #MeToo movementtriggered in 2017 by accusations against the American producer Harvey Weinstein.

Serial sexual offender

One of the complainants has told the French investigative website Mediapart that the actor even boasted that he could “make women they had an orgasm without touching them». She alleged that an hour later she was “brutally grabbed” by Depardieu as she left the set. The actor immobilized her by “closing his legs” around her before groping her waist and belly, continuing to her breasts.

Depardieu made “obscene comments” during the incident: “Come and touch my big parasol. “I’ll put it in your pussy.” He described how the actor’s bodyguards dragged him away while he shouted: “We will meet again, dear.” «My client hopes that justice will declare Gérard Depardieu serial sex offender», declared Durrieu-Diebolt.

The second plaintiff in Monday’s case, an assistant director on the same film, also alleges sexual violence.

Anouk Grinbergan actress who appeared in ‘The Green Blinds’, told AFP that Depardieu had used “salacious words… from morning to night.” «When the producers hired Depardieu to work on a film, they knew they were hiring an attacker», he added.

Grinberg said that in his experience, Depardieu “had always used a sexual and obscene language“, but that his behavior had become “much, much worse, with the permission of his profession, which pays him for it and covers up his crimes.”

Actress Charlotte Arnould was the first to file a criminal complaint, but the judge has not yet ruled on the request presented by the prosecution in August for Depardieu to be tried for rape and sexually assault her.

There is also an investigation underway in Paris after a former production assistant accused Depardieu of sexual assault in 2014.

and the actress Helene Darras He filed a complaint for sexual assault that expired.

The Spanish writer and journalist Ruth Baza She has accused Depardieu of raping her in 1995.

“Never, but never, have I abused a woman,” Depardieu wrote in an open letter published in the newspaper ‘Le Figaro’ in October last year.

Weeks later, President Emmanuel Macron scandalized feminists by denouncing a “manhunt” against Depardieuwhom he described as an “imposing actor” who “makes France proud.”

Macron’s statements came after an investigative television program broadcast a recording in which Depardieu made repeated misogynistic and insulting comments about women.