Actor and director Samuel Theis is accused of rape by a 27-year-old technician on the sidelines of the filming of the film “I Swear”.
An investigation was opened against Samuel Theis, director and actor of the film Anatomy of a Fall, following a complaint for rape filed at the end of last July, while a complaint with the constitution of a civil party was also filed in mid-November. The Metz public prosecutor confirmed the opening of a preliminary investigation which is still ongoing.
According to information from Télérama and Libération, a 27-year-old technician accuses the director of the film Je le swear of having forced him to have sexual relations last summer, after a party organized in an apartment rented by the production. He assures that he was not able to express his consent or refusal and would have left the filming a few days later. He told Télérama (comments reported by BFM TV) that, during this sexual encounter, he was “not in his normal state”. “I feel like I’ve been drugged.”
Samuel Theis refutes the facts he is accused of. He confirms for his part that he did indeed “have consensual oral sex” with the complainant the day after the party. A few days later, the technician told him by SMS that he had the impression of having experienced a “sexual assault”, but he said he had not heard of the legal consequences given to the case by the press.
In a press release sent by his lawyer, the director assures that an internal investigation lasting several months concluded that there was “a lack of conclusive evidence” and that there was no “element likely to characterize misconduct”.
“Samuel Theis must be able to respond to this accusation in a strictly judicial framework, without feeling forced to make his defenses public,” also stipulates the press release which denounces information “as insidious as it is erroneous”. He also called for “respecting his presumption of innocence”.
Following the technician’s accusations during the summer, the filmmaker was confined in an unusual protocol. To reconcile the accuser’s words and the continuation of filming, the production decided to physically separate the director from his team, which he managed remotely until the end of filming.
