The announcement had serious consequences for Sofiane Bennacer.
Tuesday evening, our colleagues from
Parisian
revealed the indictment, last October, of the 25-year-old actor for acts of rape and domestic violence committed against four of his ex-companions.
Headlining the film
Les Amandiers
, signed by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Sofiane Bennacer was on the list of male hopefuls for the César 2023.
“
The Bureau of the Académie des César, in agreement with the Revelations Committee, has decided that the information published by the press since November 22 concerning the indictment of actor Sofiane Bennacer and the judicial review imposed on him, ordered, without prejudice to the presumption of innocence and out of respect for the alleged victims, to remove it from the list of 32 revelations, proposed as an indication on November 16 for the César 2023.
“It is with this statement that the Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques ousted the actor.
Removing the possibility of a future appointment.
The management also clarified that this important point, in its regulations, no measure stipulates that an actor questioned by justice cannot be eligible for the Cesars.
What the Academy plans to remedy.
Read alsoCaesar Academy: high-speed modernization
Already largely tainted by cases of sexist and sexual violence, in particular that involving Roman Polanski, the institution of cinema quickly backtracked after the publication of two articles, one from
Parisian
and the other from
Liberation
, this Friday, November 25.
Two investigations in which we learn that three complaints for rape and one for domestic violence were filed by four ex-girlfriends of the actor.
The first dates back to January 2021. Sofiane Bennacer was then a student at the National Theater in Strasbourg and a classmate filed a complaint against him for rapes committed between 2018 and 2019. Three other appeals followed.
The Mulhouse public prosecutor's office is opening an investigation.
The actor is indicted in October and placed under judicial supervision by an investigating judge.
This forbids her to go to Strasbourg, Mulhouse and Paris, and to meet her ex-girlfriends, as well as the director of Les
Amandiers
.
Read alsoValeria Bruni-Tedeschi denounces a “media lynching” against Sofiane Bennacer
But the young man claims his innocence.
On November 23, on Instagram, he published a long message in response to the complaints against him.
“I am innocent (…) Does the presumption of innocence still exist?
Or are we in a state of lawlessness, a state where the simple baseless accusation can destroy a life?
, he wrote.
Faithful to her actor and ex-companion, the director Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, she denounces a media lynching which ignores the presumption of innocence.
“To this day everyone knows that he has not been tried.
I was artistically impressed by Sofiane Bennacer from the first second of the casting of my film and I wanted him to be the main actor despite rumors of which I was aware, ”
she assumes, claiming a fully responsible choice.
Just like one of the two producers, Patrick Sobelman, she affirms that the production
“was not aware of a complaint”
in justice once the shooting began.
It would then have been impossible for them to replace Sofiane Bennacer, without the necessary
“legal basis to dismiss him”
.
For professionals of the seventh art, the accusations against Sofiane Bennacer come to recall the memory of the Polanski affair, regularly overtaken by old accusations of sexual abuse, or even the indictments of actors like Gérard Depardieu or Ary Abittan for facts of rape, which they, like Sofiane Bennacer, dispute.
