Cannes mayor David Lisnard has published a blistering critique of media coverage of #MeToo in France, suggesting that investigations into cinema figures accused of sexual harassment were not dissimilar to those of East Germany’s secret police into political dissidents.
Lisnard made the comments in an article published in French newspaper L’Opinion over the weekend, written in response to recent speculation in the local media and film industry that a bombshell #MeToo exposé was poised to drop during the Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off this Tuesday.
The rumor mill went into overdrive last week following a report in Le Figaro newspaper that the festival had hired a crisis management PR firm to help it navigate the potential impending storm.
“Just a few days ago, a rumor surfaced promising shattering revelations about ten well-known actors, producers and directors accused of sexual assault. That was all that was needed to set the cinema world on fire,” Lisnard wrote in the piece, co-bylined with political commentator Chloé Morin.
“The simple fact that a rumor spread on the web can trigger crisis meetings and cause even the Presidency of the Cannes Film Festival to react publicly testifies to the legitimacy now granted to processes which three or four years ago would have seemed delusional,” it continued.
“Alas, this is not the first blunder of this vast campaign, going under the beneficial mask of #MeToo and the fight against sexist and sexual violence.”
Speculation has been rife that the rumored bombshell report would be published on investigative website Mediapart, which has done a number of in-depth reports into #MeToo accusations in France.
However, Mediapart correspondent Marine Turchi, who has led many of these investigations, denied the rumors in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper over the weekend.
“Mediapart doesn’t publish lists but rather long, substantiated investigations with opposing points of view,” she was quoted as saying. “I don’t know where this rumor of a list has come from but it is unfounded.”
Lisnard and Morin said that the affair could not be simply written off as a social media fuelled conspiracy, saying the frenzy and its impact on the cinema world was a symptom of a deeper “drift”.
“More and more, the press seems to be trying to substitute itself for a justice system that it judges as too slow and failing. Without the slightest concern for nuance and discernment, all the facts and accusations are thrown into the same basket of indignity,” read their piece.
“Yesterday, a Left-wing columnist joyfully called for a ‘big spring clean’ dismissing the gravity of such accusations and replacing glaring injustices with others. This temptation to do trial by media is a dead end, and it’s innocent people and the victims of the violence themselves who will pay the price.”
The piece alluded to Henri-Georges Clouzot’s controversial 1943 film The Crow, shot under the Vichy regime and exploring themes of mob persecution, as well as Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar-winning drama The Lives of Others, about officer in East Germany’s secret police, or Stasi.
“What’s the difference different between a German playwright whose private life is spied on because of suspicions about his loyalty to the communist regime and an actor whose entire past is explored, friends, family, old relationships questioned, because of any doubt about his behavior with women?,” read the opinion piece, in reference to Sebastian Koch’s character in The Lives Of Others.
“The difference between the oppressive practices that took place in East Germany and those of today in France lies in the fact that the Stasi officially acted in the name of a government with clear aims while the inquisitors of today, they do it in the name of popular pressure… From vertical dictatorship, we have shifted to horizontal tyranny.”
The recent pre-Cannes speculation comes amid a fresh #MeToo wave in France, sparked by actress and filmmaker Judith Godrèche’s decision to speak up about sexual abuse she says suffered as a teenager.
Godrèche has subsequently mounted a campaign to end what she calls a culture of silence around sexual harassment and abuse in the French film industry, and her actions have encouraged other victims to come forward from all walks of life.
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