This is a reward that is not unanimous. While the Cannes Film Festival, which kicks off this Tuesday night, is due to award a Palme d'Or of honor to Alain Delon, an online petition signed by several thousand Internet users opposes this tribute, because of the controversial positions of the French actor.
Launched on the Care2 network by the American organization "Women and Hollywood", the petition has already collected more than 18,000 signatures. The text denounces in particular a comedian "racist, homophobic, and misogynist", recalling his controversial comments, particularly on women and the rights of LGBT + people.
Controversial comments about women and gay couples
In an interview with Le Figaro Magazine in 2013, the interpreter of Tancrède in Le Guépard de Visconti confided in particular his opposition to the adoption by homosexual couples. "I live very badly this time which trivializes what is unnatural," he added. In 2018, in the broadcast of France 2 Tea or coffee , he assumed to have already hit a woman. "A slap is macho? Yes, I had to be macho," he said.
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Finally, in early May, his own son Anthony confirmed that his father sometimes locked him, as a child, in the kennel with his dogs to harden him.
"Alain Delon has the right to think what he thinks," says Thierry Frémaux
Faced with controversy, the organization of the Cannes Film Festival defended its choice. "Alain Delon has the right to think what he thinks," reacted Monday his delegate general Thierry Fremaux, saying "complicated to judge with glasses today things that happened and say a few years ago ".
According to the Sunday Diary , the 83-year-old actor was also to appear on the festival's official poster, before the death of Agnès Varda came to change the organization's plans. But the poster will still hang on the facade of the Festival Palace.
Discover the Cannes Film Festival poster in honor of Alain Delonhttps: //t.co/z6xRGrG90Bpic.twitter.com/iKjDt7LTXd
- The JDD (@leJDD) May 12, 2019