“I take off my sweater and I’m shirtless, and he gropes me and makes out with me,” says Judith Godrèche on France Inter on Thursday February 8. The actress accuses director Jacques Doillon of having sexually abused her when she was 15 years old. The actress returned to the set of the film The Fifteen-Year-Old Girl, directed by the latter, released in 1989.
“On the set, it was amazing (…). He hired an actor, we started filming and he fired him. And he put himself in place (…). And then all of a sudden he decides that there is a love scene, a sex scene between him and me,” recalls Judith Godrèche who denounces, at the same time, the “control” of a another filmmaker, Benoît Jacquot, when she was 14.
To justify her speaking out thirty years after the fact, the actress evokes a “long inner journey”. “I repressed it all these years but there was still a kind of egg that had cracked (…). There is this kind of repression, of difficulty in facing this reality,” she adds.
The investigations entrusted to the Minor Protection Brigade concern “the offenses of rape of a minor under 15 years of age by a person in authority, rape, violence by a partner, and sexual assault on a minor over 15 years of age by a person in authority,” according to Crown.
For his part, “Jacques Doillon discovered these accusations (Thursday morning) through the press,” declared his lawyer, Me Marie Dosé. “He refutes them forcefully and is eager to explain himself in court,” she explains.
The Viva Il Cinema festival, scheduled for February 21 to 25 in Tours, canceled Thursday the arrival of Jane Birkin’s former companion as president of the jury. “The Viva Il Cinema association, organizer of the Viva Il Cinema! Festival, has collectively decided to renounce the presence of Mr. Jacques Doillon as president of the jury for the 10th edition of its festival following the information relayed by the national media. An investigation is underway and we do not have to comment on the merits,” inform the organizers in a press release on the festival website. “We will keep you informed soon of the composition of the jury,” they add.
For ten years, the Italian film festival has offered a varied program around contemporary Italian cinema through several categories: first or second feature film competition, tributes, previews, new films, documentaries and conferences. The event takes place in three different locations: University of Tours, Cinéma Studio and the city’s CGR cinema.
