He was in the running for the nominations for the best male hope of the César 2023. Sofiane Bennacer, the actor of the film
Les Amandiers
, by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, has since been ousted.
The Academy indeed indicated in a press release shared on Wednesday November 23 that “the information published by the press since November 22 (...), ordered, without prejudice to the presumption of innocence and out of respect for the presumed victims , to remove it from the list of 32 Revelations” for the ceremony.
A decision announced the day after the revelations of the
Parisian
.
The daily has indeed explained that the 25-year-old actor had been indicted in October, in Mulhouse, for the alleged rapes of two former companions and alleged violence against a third.
Facts that would have occurred “between 2018 and 2019”, as confirmed by the public prosecutor Edwige Roux-Morizot.
As part of a fourth complaint, an ex-girlfriend of Sofiane Bennacer denouncing acts of rape, the actor was placed under the status of assisted witness.
He was also placed under judicial supervision.
The liberties and detention judge had originally requested that he be remanded in custody.
Read alsoWhere does domestic violence begin?
On video,
Les Amandiers
, the trailer
Several charges
Since then, Sofiane Bennacer has been prohibited from contacting the witnesses and complainants in the case.
A decision which would prevent him in particular from communicating with his current companion, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, heard as a witness in the case.
The actor has, moreover, no longer the right to go to the Paris region, to Mulhouse or to Strasbourg.
It all started in early 2021, when one of his former companions, met on the benches of the theater school La Filature, had filed a complaint, evoking a marital rape that Sofiane Bennacer would have subjected him to during one of their nights. together.
In September of the same year, a preliminary investigation was opened.
Three other women, also former companions of the actor - and some of whom are actresses - were subsequently heard by the gendarmes of the Strasbourg Research Section in charge of the investigation.
A “link under control”
Two of them describe, according to
Le Parisien
, a "liaison under the influence, during which non-consensual relations would have taken place".
Sofiane Bennacer was indicted for rape and violence with regard to one of them, and left under the status of assisted witness for the second.
A fourth woman recounted the physical violence that the actor allegedly inflicted on her, also indicted for these facts.
The National Theater of Strasbourg (TNS), whose formation Sofiane Bennacer had joined in 2019, before leaving it in 2021, had already seized the Ministry of Culture with facts “of sexist, sexual violence and harassment”.
The ministry subsequently made a report to the courts.
"I am innocent"
For his part, the actor has firmly denied these allegations.
“I will not leave for false testimonies, he wrote in a message posted on his Instagram account.
The person filing the complaint harassed me two years after our relationship to get back together.
I have messages that express his harassment towards me.
I am innocent and I will not tell you everything because making everything public does not interest me.
Before adding: “If there was the slightest proof against me, not simple bogus testimonies, real proof, I would already be in prison (…) I will perhaps be boycotted by the cinema.
Anyway, I was humiliated in the depths of my soul ” Sofiane Bennacer filed a complaint for defamation against her accusers.
For her part, one of the complainants recently declared through her lawyers that she "maintained in full the remarks and positions already expressed before the investigating services".