Dominique Boutonnat, the head of France’s top cinema institution, is to be tried in June on charges of sexually assaulting his godson, prosecutors have said.
The announcement came as French cinema reels from a renewed #MeToo reckoning in which several big names, including the actor Gérard Depardieu, have been accused of sexual abuse.
Activists have called for 54-year-old Boutonnat, the head of the powerful National Centre of Cinema (CNC), to step down from his position after the allegations, saying he is not the man to lead the required change. Boutonnat has denied the accusations.
The prosecutor’s office said the trial was set for 14 June. Neither the CNC nor Boutonnat’s lawyer were immediately available for comment.
Boutonnat’s godson, who is not a relative, accused him in 2020 of sexual abuse during a holiday in Greece earlier the same year when he was 21.
The film producer said it was “consensual kissing”, but he was charged with sexual assault in September 2022. The French government had a few months earlier reappointed him to a second term as CNC president, much to the dismay of activists.
The case was given renewed attention after the actor Judith Godrèche called for Boutonnat to be removed from his position during a hearing in the senate last week.
If he was not removed, she said, the CNC would be a place to which “producers go laughing because they think, it’s funny, I’m off to be trained against sexual violence at an institution whose president has himself been accused of sexual violence.”
Godrèche has become a key figure in France’s #MeToo movement in recent months after accusing two directors of rape and sexual assault when she was a minor, charges they deny.
The CNC is the main state body for cinema in France, and a source of generous financial aid for local and foreign arthouse films.
