“For thirty years, silence has been my driving force.” Last month, in a room in which you could have heard a pin drop, actress Judith Godrèchethe sexist violence in which French cinema has been an accomplice for decades. Godrèche’s speech at the César Awards — the French equivalent of the Oscars — was both highly anticipated and unprecedented, and met with a standing ovation.
revealed that, as a child actress, she was sexually abused by a filmmaker. The same year, French Senegalese Ivorian actressshe had been raped by a Cameroonian filmmaker in Central African Republic. In 2020, author Vanessa Springora described being trapped as a 14-year-old in an abusive relationship with novelistrevealed that she was routinely raped by her coach when she was 15. The next year, Camille Kouchner’s best-selling book “La familia grande” provoked a national reckoning on incest.