Considered one of France’s maximum a success actors is in court docket accused of sexually assaulting two girls at the set of one among his movies.
Gerard Depardieu, 76, has starred in additional than 200 movies over 5 many years, successful two highest lead actor awards on the Cesars, in addition to being nominated for an Oscar and 15 different Cesars.
In recent times he has confronted a sequence of sexual attack allegations, all of which he denies.
Whilst the #MeToo motion in the end resulted in the downfall of Hollywood movie director Harvey Weinstein, France’s #balancestonporc identical has struggled to realize momentum.
Depardieu’s court docket case, coming quickly after that of Gisele Pelicot, who waived her anonymity to show her husband had orchestrated her drugging and rape by way of greater than 50 males, is evidence for lots of that France is in the end getting its personal #MeToo second.
Right here Sky Information appears on the case – and what it manner for ladies’s rights in France.
Symbol: Gerard Depardieu arrives at court docket. Pic Reuters
What’s he accused of?
Depardieu is accused of sexually assaulting two feminine workforce contributors at the set of the movie Les Volets Verts (Inexperienced Shutters) in 2021.
The nameless girls each declare the actor pressured himself on them on a couple of events, touching them over their garments, consistent with court docket paperwork.
Symbol: Pic Reuters
The primary lady stated in a single incident, as she handed him in a hall he grabbed her, pinned her down between his legs and rubbed himself in opposition to her waist, hips, and chest, making accompanying gestures and lewd feedback.
The opposite lady claimed he touched her buttocks in public on a couple of instance, in addition to touching her chest.
Depardieu denies the allegations and gave the impression in particular person on the Tribunal de Paris for the case to be heard on Monday and Tuesday. A panel of judges will come to a decision whether or not he’s discovered responsible, which would depart him going through as much as 5 years in jail or a high quality of€75,000 (£62,000).
The trial was once because of get started in October however was once postponed after Depardieu’s felony group requested for a six-month extend because of his deficient well being. Struggling headaches from diabetes and hypertension, they stated he was once not able to take a seat for lengthy sessions.
Symbol: In Cannes in 1997. Pic: Reuters
One by one, he additionally stays beneath investigation for the alleged rape and sexual attack of a 22-year-old actress. The lady claims Depardieu sexually assaulted her two times at his house.
She at first reported the alleged incidents in 2018 however the fees have been dropped in 2019 following a nine-month investigation.
Alternatively, the case was once reopened in October 2020 when the girl refiled the criticism.
In March 2022, Depardieu’s bid to get the case thrown out was once rejected by way of Paris’s court docket of enchantment, with government announcing he would stay beneath investigation till the subject is both despatched to trial or brushed aside. He denies the allegations.
In April 2023, investigative French media outlet Mediapart reported claims of 13 girls who stated Depardieu sexually assaulted or pressured them between 2004 and 2022.
In an open letter within the newspaper Le Figaro that October, Depardieu stated he had “by no means abused a lady”.
A bunch of fifty French stars, together with singer and spouse of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy Carla Bruni, wrote their very own open letter protecting him in Le Monde, condemning what they described as his “lynching” and describing him as “among the finest” French actor.
Every week later, President Emmanuel Macron condemned the “manhunt” for Depardieu, calling him an “immense actor” who “makes France proud”.
Symbol: A girls’s rights activist all over a protest in January 2024 in Paris. Pic: AP
Who’s Gerard Depardieu?
Depardieu was once born in Chateauroux, central France in 1948. He left house on the age of 16 for Paris, the place he were given his first performing process with a travelling theatre corporate.
After a couple of minor movie roles, his ruin got here in 1973 with a lead section in Bertrand Blier’s movie Les Valseuses (Going Puts) – along his former theatre pals Patrick Dewaere and Miou Miou.
From there his reputation boomed and he was one of the prolific French actors of the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties.
He gained awards for his roles in The Remaining Metro and Cyrano de Bergerac, which additionally won an Oscar nomination. He was once made president of the Cannes Movie Pageant jury in 1992.
His good fortune additionally noticed him transform a Chevalier of France’s Legion d’Honneur and its Ordre nationwide du Merite – two of the rustic’s maximum prestigious honours.
Symbol: Former French President Jacques Chevalier awards Depardieu the Chevallier de los angeles Legion d’Honneur on the Elysee Palace in 1996. Pic: Reuters
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Throughout kind of 250 movies, he has labored with greater than 150 administrators, together with Jean-Luc Godard and Ridley Scott.
He was shut pals with Robert De Niro once they starred in combination in Bernardo Bertolucci’s movie 1900 in 1976.
Depardieu married fellow actor Elisabeth Depardieu in 1971. She starred along him in Jean de Florette and Manon Of The Spring in 1986. That they had two kids, who each was actors. Their son Guillaume died from pneumonia elderly 37 in 2008. The couple divorced in 1996.
He introduced his retirement from performing in 2005, claiming he had made “sufficient” movies and wanted to pursue different issues.
In 2012 he moved to Belgium to keep away from paying taxes in France. He wrote an open letter to the then high minister, announcing he was once surrendering his French passport as a result of he sought after “not anything to do” together with his house nation and the federal government was once seeking to “punish good fortune”.
Symbol: With Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi in 2013. Pic: AP
Vladimir Putin for my part signed an government order to present him Russian citizenship in 2013. Two years later his movies have been banned in Ukraine over feedback he made wondering the rustic’s sovereignty as an impartial state. He has since condemned Russia’s battle there.
He additionally claims to had been given citizenship by way of the United Arab Emirates.
In 2023 he was once stripped of his Nationwide Order of Quebec after a documentary published him making lewd feedback and sexual gestures on a travel to North Korea in 2018, which the area’s premier described as “stunning”.
Symbol: On the Netflix premiere of the sequence Marseille within the town in 2016. Pic: Reuters
Why is the Depardieu case so vital in France?
The #MeToo and #TimesUp actions in america noticed girls within the inventive industries calling out sexual harassment and attack by way of their male opposite numbers.
However it “did not in reality take off in France” in the similar approach, Sarah McGrath, leader government of Ladies For Ladies France, an organisation combating in opposition to gender-based violence, tells Sky Information.
Whilst she noticed colleagues world wide “overjoyed that sufferers may in the end really feel assured to speak about the crimes they might be subjected to”, she says in France “we had an excessively other enjoy”.
In 2018, dozens of feminine French stars and intellectuals signed an “anti-MeToo manifesto”, condemning the motion as a “witch hunt” and protecting males’s sexual freedom to proposition girls.
Even if some, significantly Depardieu’s co-star and pal Catherine Deneuve, have publicly U-turned at the factor, it demonstrated a resistance to modify in French society.
Symbol: With actor and co-star Catherine Deneuve in Cannes in 1984. Pic: AP
Blanche Sabbah, a French feminist activist and comedian e book creator, says: “We adore to speak about being the cultural exception in France.
“We’ve got this concept that in case you are some more or less inventive genius then you might be much less in control of unhealthy behaviour – and that we are extra sexually liberated – and do not fear ourselves with ethical panics like in america. I feel that stopped the [MeToo] motion in its tracks.”
Ms McGrath describes this “cultural exception” as “an perspective {that a} guy’s recognition and livelihood is extra vital than sufferers”.
Each girls additionally level to a “normal mistrust” of claimants and “false concepts” they’re bypassing the courts and telling their tales within the media to “get cash”.
“It is merely no longer true and springs from a lack of know-how that the French justice machine does no longer play a protecting position for sufferers of sexual violence,” she says.
“Sufferers are in reality much more likely to come back out with money owed of 1000’s of euros in the event that they move during the justice machine, which a ways exceeds any reimbursement they may get.”
Symbol: Gisele Pelicot outdoor court docket after her husband’s conviction. Pic: Reuters
However whilst the “balancestonporc” – record your pig – hashtag struggled to realize momentum in 2018, the ladies say they’ve observed a shift – in particular following the case of Gisele Pelicot and the conviction of her husband for raping and alluring no less than 50 different males to rape her whilst she was once drugged and subconscious.
“It is taken time, however in the end we are getting someplace,” Ms Sabbah says. “Gisele’s case serves as a reminder that our tradition has an enormous affect on how we behave.”
The ones discovered responsible within the Pelicot case have been elderly between 20 and 70 and integrated a journalist, nurse, firefighters, and a DJ.
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“She has confirmed that that is the issue of each and every guy – that what you suppose your favorite film megastar can do serves as an issue for justifying what crimes you possibly can devote as a ‘standard’ particular person’,” Ms Sabbah provides.
Without reference to the end result of the Depardieu case, each girls agree that his prosecution represents a “large step ahead” for ladies’s rights and sufferers of gender-based violence.
“There were 3 or 4 convictions [of men for gender-based violence] just lately, so I feel the way in which the ones circumstances are perceived now could be other to the way it was once in 2018,” Ms Sabbah says.
“We’ve got long gone from ‘classement sans suite’ (no additional motion) to film stars on trial.”
