eight-month suspended sentence required against a former leader of the feminist collective 50/50

Eight months of suspended prison sentence were required Tuesday, March 14 against Juliette Favreul Renaud, a film producer and former administrator of the Collectif 50/50, prosecuted for “sexual assault by a person in a state of obvious intoxication” against the actress Nadege Beausson-Diagne.

The trial took place in a room of the Paris court full to bursting with friends of the producer, ex-administrator of the 50/50 association which advocates “parity, equality and diversity in cinema and audiovisual” . The complainant, represented by her lawyer Anouck Michelin, was absent from the hearing. “I ask the court to find (the defendant) guilty of the charges against her”, asked the prosecutor, requesting eight months in prison accompanied by a two-year probationary sentence, an obligation of care and a ban on contacting the complainant. The court will announce its decision on May 23.

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“My pantyhose prevented it”

The facts date back to March 11, 2022 during an evening in the Parisian apartment of a member of the association. The next day, the actress, now 50 years old – instigator in particular of the #MeToo movement in Africa – files a complaint against the producer, two years older. “I was in a skirt, she put her hand on my left thigh and moved it up to my sex, with the desire to penetrate me, but my pantyhose prevented her, even though I clearly felt his finger. I remained frozen for two or three seconds, then I took her hand and pushed her away violently. had told the actress to the investigators. The producer had been placed in police custody for nearly 48 hours.

I didn’t know that running your hand through your hair was a post-colonial act.

Juliette Favreul Renaud

Appearing free under judicial supervision, Juliette Favreul Renaud again contested all the charges, “an invention”. The producer in question said that she had been arrested “very aggressively” by the actress who reproached him for smoking at the window, then that she had “put your hand in your hair” and he had “says ‘it’s going to be fine'”. “I didn’t know that running your hand through your hair was a post-colonial act”she added, pleading not to have “no sexual attraction to women”. “It ruined my life. I didn’t do anything to her except put my hand in her hair.”she concluded with a sob.

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No one witnessed the offending gesture, recalled his lawyers, Céline Lasek and Fanny Colin, who evoke a “sloppy, disloyal, unbalanced and unfair investigation, carried out solely against the accused”. The two lawyers therefore asked “full cancellation” of the procedure. For Anouck Michelin, on the contrary, the case is “simple”. “A social evening takes place, one of the guests uninhibited by alcohol goes beyond the limits”, does he sum up. “We see everything through a prism, this “We believe you” carries everything including the critical spiritretorted Céline Lasek. Twenty-five people in a lighted room, without music, who witnessed a sexual assault and no one saw anything, heard anything?

The case had caused the explosion of thefeminist association. A in order to The Obs published last september explains that the case revealed a violent and irreconcilable fault line within the group, between “the partisans of a protest feminism, that “which rises and breaks” as Adele Haenel to the Césars, against the proponents of a strategy of small steps”. The 50/50 collective made a name for itself in 2018, during the 71^e edition of Cannes film festivalby gathering 82 women on the steps, to denounce “the glass ceiling” in the world of cinema. 82 was then the number of directors selected in competition for Golden Palm since the first edition in 1946, against 1688 men.