The actor and director Samuel Theis, who plays the husband in the Palme d’Or Anatomy of a Fall, is accused of rape by a technician on the set of I Swear, the last film he directed. The facts were reported by Libération and Télérama in two investigations published on January 5 and 6 respectively.
The sexual assault allegedly took place on June 30, 2023, during an evening between members of the I swear team, a month after the start of filming. One of the guests, an alcoholic 27-year-old technician, quickly blacked out. Witnesses found him asleep on the toilet bowl. “I was not in my normal state, I felt like I had been drugged,” the alleged victim told Télérama.
According to Libération, the young man was subsequently placed on a bed, in an unoccupied room. It was in the early morning, once the guests had left, that he was allegedly raped by Samuel Theis. According to Télérama, the young man “was in a daze, unable to express his consent or his refusal of consent”. According to our colleagues, the machinist filed a complaint with the Metz public prosecutor.
For his part, the 45-year-old filmmaker contests these accusations with “all his might” with Libération and evokes a consensual sexual relationship. “We started flirting during the party,” he told the daily. Marie Dosé, Samuel Theis’ lawyer (who is also that of Frédéric Beigbeder), also certified to Libération that she “has no information on a complaint filed or a procedure in progress” and that her client “has never been summoned”.
Filming resumes and the alleged victim can no longer stand being on set. She wants to break her contract. According to Libération, the film crew released him from his duties, offered him legal help and paid him all of his fees. The production company then organizes several meetings, including actors and technicians, to discuss whether or not to continue working with Samuel Theis.
Collectively, members agree on a strict protocol. According to Libération, the filmmaker is confined until the end of filming. “We had to try to imagine a solution that would allow this film to go to the end whatever the legal outcome of this case. We looked for the lowest common denominator which protects everyone and does not undermine either the presumption of innocence or the possibility of guilt: a safe space has been set up,” the production reports to our colleagues.
Concretely, as Libération details, during this “isolation”, the director had to be absent from the sets and notify the teams if he wished to go to the scene, so that people who did not wish to meet him could organize themselves. However, those who wanted to visit him could do so freely.
Samuel Thies recently starred in Anatomy of a Fall, the feature film by Justine Triet which won two Golden Globes on the night of January 7 to 8 in the “best foreign language film” and “best screenplay” categories. Samuel Theis’ film Je le jure evokes the journey of a man chosen at random to become a jury member. For the moment, no theatrical release date has been communicated.
