MWhile the three-time Oscar-winning actress receives the Palme d’Or for lifetime achievement, the long shadow of MeToo falls on the Cannes Film Festival
Cannes at the foot of the immense Meryl Streepawarded with the Honorary Palme d’Or for Lifetime Achievement. The 77th edition of the event opens with tears of emotion Film Festival with an opening ceremony entirely dedicated to the three-time Oscar-winning actress.
Palme d’Or goes to Meryl Streep
An emotional woman on stage Juliette Binoche he is moved by rewarding her: “We adore you, you are an international treasure, you changed the way women are portrayed in cinema“.
Maryl Streep does not hide her tears: “The last time I was here I was already the mother of three children – says the actress -, I was about to turn 40 and I thought my career was over. It wasn’t an unrealistic expectation for actresses at the time. And the only reason I’m here tonight is because of the very talented artists I’ve worked with, including Madame La President Greta Gerwig, who directed her in 2019 in “Little Women”, ed.)”. Thanks then go to “you, the cinephiles, who didn’t get bored of me. My mother was right about everything – Streep jokingly concludes -, she told me: ‘You’ll see Meryl, everything goes by so quickly’ and it was like that. Everything passes quickly except my speeches which are too long…”.
The long shadow of MeToo on the Cannes Film Festival
While the Film Festival celebrates the queen of international cinema, the MeToo and the whole theme of power, including sexual power, in the film industry is a thorn in the side of Cannes 77 e becomes the protagonist in the jury’s statements and then in the appeals and in the films.
There tension is running high on the Croisetteespecially since MoiAussi , the French version of MeToo , announced that it had in its hands a list of 10 famous peopleamong actors, directors and producers, accused of sexual harassment and violence, and which the magazine “Mediapart” threatens to disclose during the days of the Festival. Interviewed by Le Figaro in this regard, the president of the Cannes Film Festival, Iris Knoblochdeclared that he was “on high alert”.
“Moi Aussi”, the short film by Judith Godrèche at Cannes
Metoo is a very hot front also starting from the short film participated “Moi Auxi” or MeToo by the French activist Judith Godrèche that has reported the sexual violence of Benoit Jacquot and Jacques Doillon when she was only 15 years old. Godrèche, inserted at the last minute in the Festival when rumors of abuse scandals that will come out in the next few days were already going crazy, was yesterday in Paris with about a hundred activists ask for the resignation of Dominique Boutunnat who will be tried in June for sexual assaults, but in the meantime he is in his position as president of the Cnc, the national cinema centre.
The Polanski case shakes MeToo
And the MeToo in Cannes rebounds on the day Roman Polanskiaccused by the British actress Charlotte Lewis, he was acquitted of defaming her calling her a liar, while in Italy Jasmine Trinca (which arrives at Cannes with “The Art of Joy” directed by Valeria Golino) addresses the topic by declaring to Vanity Fair that he has suffered “several times when I was young physical and verbal harassment“.
Jasmine Trinca: “90% women doubt harassment, me too”
The plaintiff’s complaint is cagainst “the unsuspected: in cinema the directors, the powerful, celebrated, recognised, esteemed people“, but also against a system: “It’s not about bad apples, it’s not about maniacs: we’re talking about a system of power, the product of a culture”.
Jasmine Trinca also reflects on the experience of Common Dissent, the collective of actresses born in the wake of the American Me Too, and of which she was one of the most prominent activists: “It was a failure. And I take it on politically.”
Trinca does not name the abusers “because At the time of the events I didn’t fully understand what was happening to me and it was only afterwards that I became aware. Today it is too late to file complaints. But I tell it so that other women can recognize themselves and I’m interested in making it a political discourse, denouncing a system. I have no fear. They could come to me to tell me something: but they won’t come.”
