Women’s voices are being freed in the film industry. Today, more and more of them are denouncing acts of sexual or moral violence that may have taken place during filming. This is the case for Joachim Lafosse’s collaborators.
The Belgian filmmaker, who has just released his latest film entitled A silence, with Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Devos, is today at the heart of a lively controversy. Several women who worked with him on film sets denounce his dark working methods which foster a toxic environment. Worse still, he is accused of moral and sexual harassment.
Among these women, we find editor Sophie Vercruysse, who worked with filmmaker Joachim Lafosse from 2004 to 2015. Years of collaboration and “scars left in my brain” she confides to our colleagues at Release in their June 11, 2024 issue. But this artist is not the only one to speak out. Virginie Efira also came out of silence.
Virginie Efira delivers a powerful speech
In the columns of the daily newspaper, the actress returned to her collaboration with Joachim Lafosse, on the shooting of the film Continuereleased in 2019. A memory she would have preferred to forget: “It was probably one of the worst shoots of my life.” The reason for this failure? The director was very authoritarian towards his team, pushing them to the limit.
“He was trying to talk to me, I was running saying, I can’t see you, I can’t see you anymore! It was one of the funniest shoots in pathos. I was 40 years old, he absolutely couldn’t fire me, I’m an already placed actress He pushed me to the limit, but everyone was against him, the producers couldn’t take it anymore.
Virginie Efira describes the director as “someone who only has access to one reality, his own, incapable of questioning himself, and a sort of visceral driving force in wanting to bring about destabilization in the other. To generate conflict in order to feel alive, and probably to create”, then adds: “He will go to the place of transgression, to put you in all your states, so that you are destabilized, inferiorized, angry.”
For his part, Joachim has fond memories of his collaboration with the Belgian actress. A relationship he describes as “cordial and respectful”.
A wave of testimonies
Sophie Vercruysse, Virginie Efira, but also other women, today accuse the filmmaker of harassment on film sets. Among the other artists who spoke, there was also Vania Leturcq, who started as Joachim Lafosse’s first assistant director, on the feature film It makes you happy. At the time, she was 21 years old (compared to 41 today) and the filmmaker would have denigrated her in front of everyone: “He shouted at me in front of the whole team: you are transparent! You don’t exist!”
For her part, the second assistant director, Valérie Houdart, aged 23 at the time, accused the director of acts that could amount to sexual assault, and intended to file a complaint: “Joachim pushes me into a corner, between a wall and a door, and kisses me.” A further accusation, which the principal concerned continues to deny.
If these multiple testimonies relate different facts, all these artists point to the same observation: the permanent feeling of anxiety which reigned during the filming, like the young scriptwriter Émilie Flamant: “Every key position cried over this film” (Free studente, Editor’s note).
Joachim Lafosse remains presumed innocent of the facts with which he is accused until the closure of this case.
