The Festival de Cannes, which runs from May 14 to 25, will present French actress, director, screenwriter and producer Judith Godrèche’s new short film, which highlights the stories of victims of sexual violence. These individual experiences add to her own, underscoring their sadly universal nature. The Festival de Cannes thus wishes to give resonance to these personal accounts.
Cinema looks at the world, and sometimes, calls it out. Through gestures or silences, words or glances.
Three months ago, the resounding call for action and collective responsibility in the fight against persistent sexual abuse in French cinema was striking in its strength and courage, its clarity and assurance. And it went far beyond the boundaries of the Seventh Art to question the whole of society, which is struggling to open its eyes.
Exactly one month after this salutary speech, on March 23, 2024, Judith Godrèche took up the two means of expression she knows best — writing and film — and brought together women and men who had shared their traumatic experiences with her.
“Suddenly, before me was a crowd of victims, a reality that also represented France, so many stories from all social backgrounds and generations,” Judith Godrèche confided. “Then the question was, what I was going to do with them? What do you do when you’re overwhelmed by what you hear, by the sheer volume of testimonies?”
Reconstructing an intimate audio and visual landscape, she created a film in the form of a choral piece, made up of personal accounts told in fragments and she staged this bitter but life-saving journey, from wordless pain to the beginning of liberation through words, with some 1,000 people. Music, dance, images and the world of imagination offer them a space as physical as it is symbolic: to be together, in the middle of the street, in broad daylight, and to occupy the city as a militant gesture.
Moi aussi (Me too), in the Official Selection 2024, will be screened at the Un Certain Regard opening ceremony in the Salle Debussy of the Palais des Festivals and at the Cinéma de la Plage, with free admission, on May 15.
Actress, director, screenwriter and producer Judith Godrèche has appeared in nearly fifty films. She began her film career in 1981 with Nadine Trintignant’s L’Été prochain (Next Summer), and has since gone on to play a host of roles in movies, on television and in plays. Nominated for several César awards, Judith Godrèche has worked with filmmakers the world over, including Sophie Fillières, Cédric Klapisch, Park Chan-wook, Olivier Assayas, Jerzy Skolimowski, François Ozon and Tonie Marshall.
In 2010, she wrote and directed her first film, Toutes les filles pleurent (All Girls Cry), before returning to the camera in 2023 with her Icon of French Cinema series, broadcast on Arte. This year’s Moi aussi, written and directed by Judith Godrèche, was produced by Didar Dommeri of Maneki Films.