France’s cinema boss to face sexual assault trial in June

The head of France’s top cinema institution Dominique Boutonnat is to be tried in June on charges of sexually assaulting his godson, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

The announcement comes as French cinema reels from a renewed #MeToo reckoning that has seen several big names, including acting legend Gerard Depardieu, accused of sexual abuse.

Activists have called for 54-year-old Boutonnat, the head of the powerful National Centre of Cinema (CNC), to step down from his position after the allegations against him, saying he is not the man to lead the required change.

Boutonnat has strongly denied the accusations.

The prosecutor’s office said the trial was set for June 14.

Neither the CNC nor Boutonnat’s lawyer were immediately available for comment.

Boutonnat’s godson, not a relative, accused him in 2020 of sexual abuse during a holiday in Greece earlier the same year when he was 21 years old.

The film producer says it was “consensual kissing”, but he was charged with sexual assault in September 2022.

The French government had a few months earlier reappointed him to a second term as CNC president, much to the dismay of activists.

The case was given renewed attention after actor Judith Godreche called for Boutonnat to be removed from his position during a landmark hearing in the upper-house Senate last week.

Otherwise, she said, the CNC would be a place to which “producers go laughing because they think, it’s funny, I’m off to be trained against sexual violence at an institution whose president has himself been accused of sexual violence.”

Godreche has become a key figure in France’s #MeToo movement in recent months after accusing two directors of rape and sexual assault when she was a minor, charges they deny.

The CNC is the main state body for cinema in France, and a source of generous financial aid for local and foreign arthouse films.

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