Some 8,000 artists signed the “countertribuna” in 48 hours in response to the support of the actor Gérard Depardieu, highly criticized after the dissemination of images in which he multiplies misogynistic and insulting comments towards women, its promoters indicated on Sunday.
“Thank you to all the artists, known or not,” wrote the singers Angèle and Louane or the rapper Médine on the website.
“Spitting in the faces of the victims”
This text responds to a column from the pro-Depardieu camp that asks “not to erase” the former icon of French cinema, published on Christmas Day in The Figaroas well as the words of Emmanuel Macron, who denounced on December 20 a “human persecution” against the 75-year-old actor, accused of rape since 2020 following a complaint from a twenty-something actress, Charlotte Arnould.
“This forum and Macron’s defense are a spit in the face of the victims of Gérard Depardieu, but also of all the victims of sexist and sexual violence,” consider the signatories of the “counter-tribuna.”
Another critical petition, titled “Address to the Old World,” was published on Sunday on the Médiapart website with some 70 signatures from film personalities, including Laure Calamy and Anouk Grinberg.
“No one wants to erase the artist. But Gérard Depardieu’s talent does not authorize the indignity of his behavior,” it is written in this text.
The signatories distance themselves
Fallen from his pedestal after the dissemination in early December of images in which he multiplies misogynistic comments, Gérard Depardieu, the subject of three complaints of sexual assault or rape that he himself denies, divides the world of cinema and beyond.
The unrest is amplified by the fact that several of the approximately 60 personalities who signed the support platform have since distanced themselves, including Carole Bouquet, Nadine Trintignant and Gérard Darmon.
Because the initiative comes from an almost unknown actor, Yannis Ezziadi, a columnist for the ultra-conservative magazine Causeur and close to Julie Depardieu, the actor’s daughter. He was described in an investigation of World as “close to the identity and reactionary spheres.”
On Sunday, it was actor Pierre Richard who dissociated himself and explained about victims of sexual assault. “I signed without knowing the ideological movement in which the pen of the petition evolves,” he adds.
Source: BFM TV
