French director Doillon calls abuse allegations ‘lies’

French film director Jacques Doillon, swept up in a storm of #MeToo allegations by several actors including Judith Godreche, denounced on Friday the "lies" and "false accusations" against him.

Published: 10 February 2024 10:02 CET

French director Doillon calls abuse allegations 'lies'

French director Jacques Doillon at the 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in 2021. Photo: Valery HACHE/AFP.

In a statement sent to AFP, he said he was at the disposal of the courts. “That Judith Godreche and other women through her have the heart to denounce a system, an era, a society, is courageous, commendable and necessary,” said the director.

“But the justness of the cause does not authorise arbitrary denunciations, false accusations and lies.”

Godreche, 51, claimed Doillon, 79, took advantage of her while directing her in one of his films when she was 15. He was 29 years older at the time.

Doillon and the director Benoit Jacquot were targeted this week by a complaint from Godreche, which prompted French prosecutors to open an investigation.

“I am watching with attention this upheaval, not to say this revolution, initiated and carried by women, whose voices have been freeing up for several years now,” Doillon said. “However, I have never committed the acts of which I have been accused, and I will provide the courts, since the case is now before them, with all the factual elements at my disposal to demonstrate my innocence,” he added.

He also denied being close to Jacquot, who is facing accusations of abuse and violence by Godreche.

Jacquot, who is 25 years older than the actor, directed her on screen and had a six-year relationship with her that started when she was only 14.

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The French Jewish community, the third largest in the world, has for months been on edge in the face of a growing number of attacks and desecrations of memorials.

“National police in Rouen neutralised early this morning an armed individual who clearly wanted to set fire to the city’s synagogue,” Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Police responded at 6.45 am to reports of “fire near the synagogue”, a police source said.

A source close to the case told AFP the man “was armed with a knife and an iron bar, he approached police, who fired. The individual died”.

“It is not only the Jewish community that is affected. It is the entire city of Rouen that is bruised and in shock,” Rouen Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol wrote on X.

He made clear there were no other victims other than the attacker.

Two separate investigations have been opened, one into the fire at the synagogue and another into the circumstances of the death of the individual killed by the police, Rouen prosecutors said.

Such an investigation by France’s police inspectorate general is automatic whenever an individual is killed by the police.

The man threatened a police officer with a knife and the latter used his service weapon, said the Rouen prosecutor.

The dead man was not immediately identified, a police source said.

Asked by AFP, the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office said that it is currently assessing whether it will take up the case.

France has the largest Jewish community of any country after Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

There have been tensions in France in the wake of the October 7th attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israel, followed by the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Red hand graffiti was painted onto France’s Holocaust Memorial earlier this week, prompted anger including from President Emmanuel Macron who condemned “odious anti-Semitism”.

“Attempting to burn a synagogue is an attempt to intimidate all Jews. Once again, there is an attempt to impose a climate of terror on the Jews of our country. Combating anti-Semitism means defending the Republic,” Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF). wrote on X.

France was hit from 2015 by a spate of Islamist attacks that also hit Jewish targets. There have been isolated attacks in recent months and France’s security alert remains at its highest level.