71st Cannes Film Festival – Closing ceremony – Cannes, France, May 19, 2018. Asia Argento and jury member Ava DuVernay are seen on stage. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
May 19, 2018
CANNES, France (Reuters) – Italian actress Asia Argento, who has accused movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, told the closing ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival there were abusers in the audience who had yet to be outed.
Argento, one of the women quoted in Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker article in October, said Weinstein raped her during the Cannes festival in 1997 when she was 21.
Weinstein has denied allegations of non-consensual sex. His representative, Juda Engelmayer, was not immediately available for comment on Saturday. Argento’s London-based agent, Steve Kenis, was not immediately available to provide further details.
“This festival was his hunting ground,” Argento said in a speech ahead of the awarding of the Palme d’Or and other prizes.
She said Weinstein, until this year a hugely influential presence at the festival, would never return, “shunned by a film community that once embraced him and covered up for his crimes”.
“Even tonight, sitting among you, there are those who still have to be held accountable for their conduct against women,” she said.
“You know who you are, but, most importantly, we know who you are, and we are not going to allow you to get away with it any longer,” she ended her speech, to applause.
Organizers of the festival, which began on May 9, set up a telephone hotline for victims of harassment, and several discussion groups addressed the issues of sexual abuse and the under-representation of women in the film business.
(Reporting by Robin Pomeroy and Sarah Mils; Writing by Robin Pomeroy)
