This week the name of film director Benoit Jacquot has been involved in controversy due to accusations of sexual abuse. She was the actress Judith Godreche the first to point out Jacquot, whom she accused of raping her when she was 15 years old. But since her testimony came to light, four more French actresses have denounced the director.

Two of the new complaints, which the French newspaper ‘Le Monde’ reported this Friday, refer to events that supposedly occurred when the actresses were minors and they participated in films directed by Jacquot. Julia Roy, Vahina Giocante, Isild Le Besco and Laurence Cordier remind the newspaper of different episodes in which, to varying degrees, they explain that the filmmaker went from insinuations to sexual violence, through workplace harassment or physical violence. Roy, who was 23 when she met Jacquot, evokes a relationship of manipulation, dominance, physical violence and sexual harassment in the period in which he worked with him, including as a screenwriter. He claims that she once received a slap so hard that it knocked her to the ground. Giocante and Le Besco were minors when they met the director (17 and 16 years old, respectively).

The first narrates that before filming her first film with Jacquot (‘Pas de scandale’, released in 1999), she was warned that the director “very much liked young girls”, so he avoided potential risk situations as much as possible. In addition to a strange situation about the underwear she had to wear in one scene, Giocante claims that Jacquot told her: “Don’t you understand that if you are nice to me you will do the next one?” What she interpreted as clear sexual harassment.

The actress responded that she was not “a nice girl” and never filmed with him again. “I see him as a thief of childhood, cloyed by his desire for purity,” points to ‘Le Monde’. Le Besco, contacted by the newspaper, preferred to respond with a letter since she assures that she does not feel strong enough to speak to the press about her relationship with Jacquot. She claims that she suffered “psychological or physical violence” in the six films she worked on with him. And she adds that she reserves her testimony for an eventual summons by a court and for a text on which she has been working for three months. Cordier remembers that shortly before the filming of ‘Villa Amalia’ (2009), during a dinner in a restaurant to talk about the project, Jacquot told him that both “should live a story”, since in his opinion it was necessary for the director to be in love with the actress, just like a painter with the model.

After Jacquot repeatedly insisted that she accept the key to his apartment, a proposal rejected each time, he reproached her several weeks later at another filming that she “didn’t really want to be an actress” because she had “sabotaged” herself. . Jacquot, 77 years old and with 51 films made in her career, denied to ‘Le Monde’ the most serious accusations of physical violence or sexual harassment, although she acknowledged moments of tension and “possibly” insults. “There is violence in romantic relationships. I am not special or exceptional, but because I make films it reaches exceptional proportions,” she explained.

This week’s accusations against Jacquot join others by Godreche herself against another director, Jacques Doillon, or previous ones against the actor Gérard Depardieu and other figures of French cinema.