Daniela Elstner, managing director of Unifrance, is one of eight women who have accused French singer and actor Patrick Bruel of sexual assault between 1992 and 2019, according to a report by France’s investigative news website Mediapart.
According to Mediapart, Elstner filed an official police complaint against Bruel at the Paris Public Prosecutor’s office last week for attempted rape and sexual assault. The accusation dated back to a 1997 incident at a French film festival in Acapulco, Mexico, when Elstner was a 27-year-old assistant at Unifrance and Bruel was attending for a film titled K.
Elstner’s lawyer told Mediapart: “It was only recently, after a difficult journey, that she made the painful and significant decision to speak out for herself and for all the others; and to do so, to take legal action.”
“What I want is for people to listen this time, so that they can no longer say they didn’t know,” Elstner said to Mediapart of her decision to come forward after such a long, painful journey and as a public figure, central to France’s film industry today.
According to Mediapart, a second rape complaint from an anonymous accuser was made against Bruel dating back to the 2012 Dinard British Film Festival, where Bruel was serving as jury president. The case remains under preliminary investigation at the Saint Malo public prosecutor’s office.
“This is about reopening a legal debate that was settled years ago,” Bruel’s lawyer, Christophe Ingrain, told Mediapart. He said Bruel claimed to “never to have forced a sexual act or intercourse on anyone”.
Bruel is one of France’s most well-known singers and has also starred in multiple films and TV series over the years, including 2019’s The Best Is Yet To Come opposite Fabrice Luchini, 2016’s A Bag Of Marbles and Claude Chabrol’s 2005 film The Comedy Of Power with Isabelle Huppert, plus recent TF1 thriller series State Of Alert.
Elstner is a leading figure in the French film industry, whose career includes roles at Les Films du Losange and Doc & Film International.
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