I took to the red carpet alongside other activists to highlight sexual violence. Now women of colour need a bigger place in the movement. Hollywood greats such as Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda and Greta Gerwig have been in town, but this year, I found myself on the red carpet, hand in hand with some of the most courageous women in the business.
The Cannes festival, as a symbol of the French film establishment, can no longer shy away from them. She invited me to walk alongside her and the crew of her new short film Moi Aussi Me Too , which she was presenting to the Cannes audience. In unusual silence, we stood on the steps to the Palais des Festivals covering our mouths to symbolise the silencing of sexual abuse survivors. Nobody seemed to think it in any way strange or sordid.
As a teenage film actor she received no adult support, she has said. Using a TV drama series based on her life, called Icon of French Cinema, and a range of media interviews, she relabelled the so-called relationship as what she called grooming and sexual assault β realising , she said, that as a minor she could never have given consent. In February , she filed a complaint for the alleged rape of a minor against Jacquot. He denies the allegations.
She received 5, personal accounts and launched another call on Instagram to organise a gathering of 1, people who would be part of her film, representing survivors of all forms of sexist or sexual abuse. As she had contacted me to be involved, I witnessed the impressive surge of a human wave on a Paris avenue, standing up together to say no to sexual violence. This had been one of her demands when she gave evidence to a hearing at the French national assembly in March. It was an incredible turn of events in a country that has often been hostile to the MeToo movement.
Its early response to the global MeToo movement launched in after the Harvey Weinstein scandal was shameful. It read like an attempt to airbrush decades of systemic abuse perpetrated by men in the industry shielded by artistic licence. For years, Haenel has been one of the leading voices of the MeToo movement. She first spoke out in against the film-maker who allegedly assaulted her when she was a year-old child actor.
