Carla Bruni has joined her sister, a film director, in defending a rising actor who has been banned from attending the César film awards because he is facing rape charges.
The singer and wife of the former president Nicolas Sarkozy spoke up for Sofiane Bennacer, 25, who stars in Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s latest film, Les Amandiers, saying his treatment undermined the presumption of innocence.
Bennacer faced a preliminary prosecution in November on charges of raping two women. Investigating judges will decide whether to send him for trial or conclude there are insufficient grounds and drop the prosecution. He denies any wrongdoing.
The César awards announced yesterday that anyone under investigation over sexual misconduct will be barred from its ceremony next month.
The move was aimed at averting disruption at the country’s equivalent of the Oscars following protests in support of the MeToo movement. In 2020, there was outrage when the best director award was given to Roman Polanski, a fugitive from US justice since a 1977 conviction for child rape in California.
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The row over Bennacer, born to Algerian parents and brought up in a suburb of Marseilles, has been complicated by the fact that Bruni-Tedeschi, 58, has become romantically involved with the young actor since directing Les Amandiers. The film is about a group of sexually promiscuous drama students in the 1980s.
Bruni-Tedeschi said she was “stunned” by the “media lynching” of Bennacer that she said was led by reports in Libération, the left-wing newspaper. The producers had known of the allegations against him but it was unthinkable for her to remove him from the film, she said. She had grown to trust his “human qualities” while working with him. “When you film someone, you ‘see’ whom you have in front of you,” she said when the charges became public a month ago.
Carla Bruni, 55, backed her older sister, saying she opposed all sexual abuse “but as the feminist I have always been, I want to say that you do not ease the pain of the victims by creating new victims in a vicious, random and unjust way”. She wrote on Instagram that Bennacer’s “media lynching” undermined the presumption of innocence, “one of the foundations of our democracy”.
Bennacer, who was listed by the César awards as one of the country’s most promising actors, is accusing the establishment of trying to keep him out of the industry because of racial and class resentment. “They have made me understand well that I don’t have my place in that little milieu”, he said.
He has been accused by two women of raping them in 2018 and 2019 when he was at drama school in Mulhouse and nearby Strasbourg. After an investigation, an examining judge in Mulhouse notified him that he was being placed under formal criminal investigation — a step just short of formal charging in the British system — for the apparent crimes of rape and also of violence against a third woman who laid a complaint against him. The judge will send him to trial, modify the charges or close the case after further investigation. Bennacer could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
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Several other women told Libération of sexual violence and physical assault allegations, which were quoted in a November investigation by the paper.
The César academy said it would decide within weeks whether to make its new edict permanent but for the moment it applies only to this year’s awards. It said that out of respect for the victims, it had decided “not to highlight people under investigation by the judiciary for acts of violence.”
The actor has received some backing from others. Michel Guerrin, culture columnist for Le Monde, wrote that Bruni-Tedeschi had valid artistic reasons for keeping Bennacer in her film.
“Sofiane Bennacer is her partner, except their relationship began when the film was already finished. If she is defending him tooth and nail, the presumption of innocence does not explain everything,” he said. “You have to see Les Amandiers to understand. Sofiane Bennacer is excellent. Different. He has a James Dean side with his head bowed and his eyes raised.”
The César decision and the media coverage of Bennacer would probably end his career, Guerrin added. “Whatever the legal outcome ... he is already convicted socially.”
