Cannes Festival: A number of actresses attempt to break the regulation of silence across the Me Too of French cinema | Culture | EUROtoday

“I speak, but I do not listen to you. “Where are you? What are you saying?” asked the actress Judith Godrèche a few months ago, when she reported that she had suffered abuse from the directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon when she was a minor, to the audience at the César Awards. With her brave speech, Godrèche confirmed that in the wonderful family of cinema the law of silence continues to reign when four years have passed since the Me Too of French cinema broke out with the help of the interpreter Adèle Haenel. While Haenel has ended up retiring from the profession, disgusted by her lack of support and becoming an outcast, Godrèche is invited to speak; but just enough, without making too much noise. And when on Tuesday, at the opening of the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, nine women accused the powerful producer Alain Sarde of sexually assaulting them in the eighties and nineties, the organizers of the event seemed more concerned about not ruining the party. with this new controversy than to respond to systemic violence that has lasted for too long.

This situation is explained by “the barriers erected by an audiovisual production system”—which incorporates the CNC (the equal of the Spanish Cinematography Institute), the French Cinematheque, the Lumière Institute and the Cannes Festival—“of men eager to maintain their influence” and “protect the sacred power of the authors,” in accordance with Geneviève Sellier, professor emeritus of Film Studies. “The elitist conception of artistic creation, which systematically excludes women” seems clearly in Cannes. The election of the director Greta Gerwig to preside over the jury or the Palmes d'Or awarded to the administrators Justine Triet and Julia Ducournau in earlier editions are small adjustments within the façade in a competition that this 12 months solely has 4 girls filmmakers within the official choice, in comparison with 22 male administrators, and which has a monolithic and nearly completely male board of administrators – two thirds of its members are males – which rejected in 2021 to turn out to be a joint physique.

No matter how president of the competition Iris Knobloch is, the one who chooses the movies is the overall delegate of the competition, Thierry Fremeau, who normally justifies the dearth of feminine administrators within the official choice with the pretext that Cannes is just a mirrored image of the state of cinema on the earth. Although it’s true that the proportion of girls administrators is tiny in relation to that of males – in France they’re 27% – the reason given by somebody who didn’t hesitate to open the earlier version with a movie starring Johnny Depp is, when much less, disappointing and considerably hypocritical. Because if anybody can loudly and clearly denounce the impunity of males accused of sexual violence and that sooner or later there shall be extra movies made by girls, it’s exactly an individual with their energy.

In actuality, France's delay within the struggle towards sexual violence just isn’t restricted to the world of tradition. As the equal of the Spanish Court of Auditors identified in a report, the coverage of equality between women and men established by Emmanuel Macron as a nationwide trigger in his two mandates has been restricted to “an incessant accumulation of plans without continuity or guidance.” “The distortion between rhetoric and action” of the president, highlighted by the report, was mirrored in his public assist for Gérard Depardieu, when the sexual assaults dedicated by the actor on dozens of girls have been an open secret within the trade – the actor shall be tried subsequent October― and so they solely discovered assist from the intense proper.

Faced with the immobility of energy and establishments, coinciding with the opening of the competition, 100 personalities signed a tribune in The world asking the Executive to create a complete regulation towards sexual violence in France and the introduction of the notion of consent. As the president of the Women's Foundation, Anne-Cécile Mailfert, emphasizes, it’s time for France to fill its “abysmal delay” by providing the Me Too motion “a political solution worthy of the courage shown by all the victims.”

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