A few days before the opening of the Cannes Film Festival, Tuesday, May 13, the uncertainty hangs around the traditional jury dinner, usually organized the day before the event at the Palme d’Or, a restaurant of the emblematic Martinez hotel on the Croisette.
In question, the accusations of domestic violence targeting chef Jean Imbert, who successively took the lead in the kitchens of the beach of Martinez in 2023, of the restaurant La Palme d’Or in 2024, then of the hotel bar, inaugurated a few weeks ago.
The winner of Top Chef 2012 is targeted by the testimonies of four former companions who denounced, in a survey published by Elle magazine at the end of Aprilofs Violent behaviors: denigration, crises of jealousy and, for some, physical assaults.
Although it is not known whether a judicial inquiry is underway, his communication team vigorously denied the accusations, answering point by point to each of them.
Absent from the stoves for this 78th edition?
But according to the Parisian this Sunday, May 4, the mediativee chief, who had concocted the jury menu last year, will not be behind the stoves for this 78th edition … Dinner could even take place elsewhere than in Martinez.
A prudent way for the festival to avoid any controversy? At the time of the Metoo Movement, mediated in 2017, difficult for the organization of this planetary event to ignore this affair.
-Last year, the president of the festival, Iris KnoBloch, announced her desire to react “on a case -by -case basis” facing any personality mISE in question for aggression or violence.
If Jean Imbert is not an actor, his close link with an emblematic place of the Croisette, at the heart of the event, place the organizers in a delicate situation.
A star marred by the scandal
Especially since this year, the president of the jury is none other than Juliette Binoche, a committed actress who spoke several times in recent years on violence against women in the world of cinema.
For the time being, the festival, which remains unreachable this Sunday, has made no comments on the case and has neither confirmed nor invalidates the place where the traditional jury dinner will be held.
Same silence on the side of Martinez which faces a complex equation: in three years, Jean Imbert has become the central figure of the establishment’s culinary offer.
Less than a year after having succeeded the doubly starred chief Christian Sinicropi, Jean Imbert won a star with the Palme d’Or. A reward that has been the pride of the Cannes establishment … and which is today tainted by the scandal.
