What Gérard Depardieu’s conviction means for France

Yesterday, the French mega-star was found guilty of having sexually assaulted two women on a set. It is a verdict that could have a great impact on the country’s film industry.

He could not have been more dramatically timed if he had been written in a film script. The world’s most famous film festival in Cannes began the same day as Gérard Depardieu, one of the biggest cinema stars that France has ever produced, was found guilty of sexually assault on the shooting of a film 2021, The Green Shotters, which described it by trying them while using obscene language. “The giants of cinema are no longer untouchable,” exclaimed a French news website, while another said that the news had “shaken” the start of the emblematic festival, from where I report.

Depardieu, seventy-six, is the veteran of around 200 films and television productions. Famous in France since the end of the 1960s, he had international success of art house with films such as Jean de Florette in 1986. He became a world name following an nomination for the Oscars of best actor for a sumptuous film production in French by Cyrano de Bergerac (1990), as well as Card Green Hollywood Romcom of the same year. Yesterday, Depardieu was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence, sentenced to a fine of € 29,000 (£ 24,430) and added to the register of sex offenders in France, but his lawyer said he would appeal the judgment.

About 20 women have made allegations concerning the inappropriate behavior of Depardieu in the past, but it is the first to be judged, and the meaning of the verdict cannot be overestimated, according to the writer Agnès C Poirier. “When a monument falls, it is always powerful and symbolic,” she said to the BBC.

She adds that her reputation is “deeply tarnished” but that “the French film industry condemned him a long time ago. He has not shot film for three years. His career is over. He is still one of the greatest actors of the 20th century, although we can now feel different when we watch his films.”

For many years, the larger than life figure of Depardieu has also been linked to the Cannes Film Festival. He won the prize for best actor here for Cyrano de Bergerac, launching him on his Oscar trip, and also played a role behind the scenes; Its director, Thierry Frémaux, admitted that a very derived football film of 2014, United Passions, with Depardieu, was created in Cannes due to the pressure of the actor. It was recently seen in 2015 at the festival with Isabelle Huppert for the film Valley of Love (and was seen organizing a kiss simulation at the photocall, as illustrated below).

Unsurprisingly, the president of the Cannes jury, Juliette Binoche, who also played in front of Depardieu, was invited to have reflections on the importance of her conviction at the opening press conference yesterday.

“He is no longer crowned,” she told journalists a reference to the magnitude of Depardieu’s power in the French film industry.

Eve Jackson, the editor of the culture of French News Channel France 24, told the BBC that Depardieu “was venerated as one of the sons of the Cannes Film Festival. And now that the inheritance will be questioned because it is really this festival which launched it in international respect 35 years ago with Cyrano de Bergerac.”

The festival of last year, anticipating the next trial of Depardieu, was full of activities of the own #MeToo movement of France, with French filmmakers using the most public platform of international cinema to show films dealing with the subject of sexual abuses.

Actress Judith Godrèche, who was recently noted public allegations of sexual assault by two filmmakers, Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, created a short film entitled Me too, (“me too”) featuring hundreds of victims of sexual abuse standing in the streets of Paris. Last July, Jacquot and Doillon were questioned by the police as part of the accusations, which they denied.

This year, seven films in the main competition are directors. One of them, the sound of the fall of the German writer-director Mascha Schilinski, who will be presented today, explores the generational abuse of girls told through the story of a family. But it remains to be seen how many additional films will tackle the subject of abuses during this festival.

Beyond the films, Jackson says that the atmosphere feels different from the 2025 festival, due to certain high-level cases which have sent shock waves across France. The chief of them, in December, Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men were found guilty of rape, rape and sexual assault by the wife of Pelicot, 72, Gisèle Pelicot. In February, director Christophe Ruggia was found guilty of having sexually assaulted the portrait of an actor from Lady on Fire Adèle Haenel when she was a child; Haenel publicly left the film industry in 2023, accusing it of “general complacency” towards sexual predators. Benoît Jacquot was accused of having raped two actors, which he denies.

“There is a big change that takes place in the French film industry and you can feel it here in Cannes,” explains Jackson. “And I think that the fall of Depardieu really represents this seismic change in France, which may have come later to Hollywood and in the rest of the world, but it is here now. The young actors are increasingly calling the reprehensible acts) for what he did to what he did. The idea of ​​the game of power on the filming sets of actors and directors is no longer acceptable.”

However, there is a path to go; Last month, a French parliamentary report, led by French deputy Sandrine Rousseau, found that abuses were “endemic” throughout the French entertainment industry, and that attitudes “hardly evolved” despite the #MeToo movement. The detailed report had 86 recommendations for change, including larger protections for children actors and the use of standard intimacy coordinators for sex scenes in cinema and theater (in December 2023, only four of them were reported as working throughout France, against 100 in the American entertainment industry).

Depardieu also had high -level defenders; President Macron said in 2024 that the actor “made France proud”. The sixty -six -year -old actor, Fanny Ardant, is one of his firmest supporters – Depardieu was absent from the verdict by making a film with her in the Azores yesterday – and she came to justice to support him, alongside her co -star of Cyrano de Bergerac, Vincent Perez. Brigitte Bardot, a French film star from the 1950s and 60s, also defended it publicly.

But Jackson underlines a reaction to an event during the Depardieu trial, which, according to her, is significant of a societal change. She says that there was a conviction when the lawyer for Depardieu, Jérémie, accused the two women victims of the actor in the judicial case, a 54 -year -old chest of drawers and a 34 -year -old assistant director of “hysteria”, to be “liars” and to work for the cause of “enraged feminism”.

“I think that Depardieu is increasingly considered as a different era, just like her lawyers,” she said. “They were called sexist in the way they spoke to the complainants, calling them feminists as if it was a bad thing. And that added to his troubles, because the judge called him and imposed a very good (€ 2,000) because of this. This highlights the generational change that occurs in France. His supporters are older generation actors.”

A few days before the conviction of Depardieu, Bardot, 90, publicly described the actor as “genius” on French television, and deplored that “the talented people who touch the bottom of a girl are sent to the deepest dungeon”. But this kind of attitude is considered by young people as archaic, says Jackson, and they are less aware of his reputation as a great actor.

“For people over 50 and 60, Depardieu evokes memories of being a great actor of a certain era, but I no longer know how many young people are interested in this story,” she said.