Nine women have accused prolific French producer Alain Sarde of rape and sexual assault in a detailed expose in the French edition of Elle magazine.
Sarde has denied the accusations. The 72-year-old producer has not been officially charged with any crimes for the incidents in question, according to the magazine.
The testimonies were published on May 14, on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival where Sarde has premiered 50 films over the years including Roman Polanski’s Palme d’Or-winning The Pianist and David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
The accusations date from between 1985 and 2003 and are all from actresses who mostly opted for anonymity other than Annelise Hesme and Laurence Cote. The common thread among the accusations is the women met with Sarde on the pretext of discussing potential roles both at his office, his home and other off-set locations.
One woman says she was raped by Sarde when she was 15 and he was 33 and others describe pushing away unwanted advances.
His lawyer Jacqueline Laffont issued a media statement accusing the magazine of asking Sarde to respond without divulging the names or details of the women accusing him “most of them some 40 years later”.
Laffont said the producer is “outraged and devastated by these allegations, which are all lies, and which attribute to him behaviours that he disapproves of and that are totally foreign to him.”
Sarde was embroiled in a prostitution case in Paris in 1997 involving political, artistic and sporting figures in France and abroad that was later dismissed.
Sarde’s career dates back to the 1970s and he has produced films by Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Sautet, André Téchiné, Alain Courneau, Bertrand Blier, and Bertrand Tavernier, among others. He sold his company Les Films Alain Sarde to Studiocanal in 2004, and stopped producing around a decade ago.
The news came on the same day as Mediapart published an article titled “#MeToo: the quiet power of information” denying it plans to publish a long-rumoured “list” of around 10 male industry figures said to be the subject of #MeToo-related incidents. The magazine denied such a list exists, writing “obviously this is not true” and adding “the media spectacle is pathetic.”
#MeToo is still set to take centre stage in Cannes when Judith Godrèche’s short film Me Too (Moi Aussi) premieres in Un Certain Regard on Wednesday (May 15). French actress Camille Cottin , the festival’s opening night emcee, said ahead of the ceremony: “This subject will not be overshadowed at all at the festival - on the contrary…There will be speeches by strong, powerful personalities, powerful women who will also be speaking out and who are important guests at this ceremony”.
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