Filmmaker Benoît Jacquot charged with raping two actresses, one of them a minor | Culture

French filmmaker Benoît Jacquot was indicted on Wednesday on four charges related to the rape of actresses Julia Roy and Isild Le Besco, the latter when she was a minor. An investigating judge has decided to indict Jacquot, as requested by the prosecution, on three charges related to Roy for events that occurred between 2013 and 2018, and between 1998 and 2000, in the Le Besco case.

In addition, Jacquot has been declared an assisted witness (a French legal figure that means being halfway between being free of charges and accused) in the investigation of other rapes suffered by Le Besco in 2007 and by Roy between 2014 and 2018. Le Besco, who already recounted the events in his autobiography ((True truth)took legal action against the filmmaker last May. The actress had worked with him in Sade (2000), In total (2004) and The Untouchable (2006), and accuses him of having raped her when Le Besco was 16 years old.

The filmmaker has been released under judicial supervision, on bail of 25,000 euros and under the prohibition of not contacting victims or witnesses, not engaging in activities with minors, not working as a film director or participating in public activities related to this work.

The filmmaker was arrested on Monday for questioning by the Juvenile Brigade, as was the director. Jacques Doillon (responsible for Rodin, Ponette either Young Werther), who was released on Tuesday “for medical reasons.” Both had been accused by actress Judith Godrèche, now 52, ​​of having raped her when she was a teenager. Jacquot himself had spoken publicly about the relationship he had with the actress when he was 40 and she was just 15. Godrèche broke her silence last February and denounced the director, winner of three César awards for Farewell to the queen, and responsible for other films such as Eva, My life in the theatre either Three hearts. The actress also pointed out Doillon, author, among other films, The 15 year old girlfor two episodes of abuse. Following her, several other actresses have accused both directors of sexual violence. Jacquot denied the accusations in an interview with the newspaper The World and justified himself by claiming that the age of sexual majority at the time of the reported events was 15 years old and that the relationship with the actress had been purely romantic.

Godrèche was one of the actresses who in 2017 denounced an attempted rape by American producer Harvey Weinstein and thus helped start the MeToo movement. At the last edition of the César awards, she said in her speech: “Is it possible for us to look the truth in the face? To assume our responsibilities? To be the actors of a world that is questioning itself? I have been talking and talking for a long time, but I don’t listen to you, or I barely listen to you. Where are you? What do you say?” And she asked: “Why accept that this art that unites us is used as an illicit trafficking of girls?”

Weeks later, at the Cannes Film Festival, Godrèche premiered Me too (MeToo), a 17-minute short film, whose relevance was more social than cinematic. It was screened as a prologue to the opening film —the Icelandic one Ljósbrotby Rúnar Rúnarsson— from the Un Certain Regard section and was, according to Godrèche, in keeping with the promise she made to the 5,000 victims who contacted her between February 7 of this year, when the actress reported that she was raped and assaulted as a teenager by directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, and March 23, when she called together all the people who had contacted her through the email address she set up shortly after making her sexual assault public. Of the 5,000, a thousand came to the meeting, of all ages and conditions.