the origins of a controversial forum

A text from the “MeTooMedia” collective, addressed to Emmanuel Macron, was published on Wednesday December 27 in the columns of World. “What do you do with the presumption of innocence of the complainants?”, ask the signatories after the President of the Republic spoke in favor of Gérard Depardieu, indicted for rape and criticized after a filmed sequence where we see him uttering obscene remarks towards several women. This text also responds to the column signed by 50 personalities of cinema and culture in support of the actor, published Monday December 25 in the Figaro. Two days later, the origin of this forum became clearer.

The signatories of this text, most of those close to Gérard Depardieu, are on average 70 years old. But it is one of the youngest who claims to be the editor. Yannis Ezziadi, 32, has two hats: one in the theater, where he is an actor, notably in the play Fric frac which he played with Julie Depardieu, the actor’s daughter. He is also a polemicist in the far-right magazine Talker. Under his pen, his favorite targets are feminists, the MeToo movement and “petty-bourgeois right-thinking“.

“We don’t want to erase it”

Yannis Ezziadi explained his approach to the Franceinfo television channel. “By what right can we prohibit Gérard Depardieu from filming? What reprehensible has he done to prevent us from filming him?”he asks. “Justice is justice. It is art that interests us, Gérard Depardieu is part of French heritage. We do not want to erase him, he is essential to the artistic history of our country”assures the actor and polemicist.

Yannis Ezziadi also has to his credit an attempt to rehabilitate the writer Gabriel Matzneff, at the time of the film’s release. The consent, adapted from the shocking book by Vanessa Springora. According to him, it was the communicator Anne Hommel who helped him convince the Figaro to publish his text. This communications specialist had in her time advised Dominique Strauss Kahn and Jérôme Cahuzac.