Judith Godrèche, an actor who has accused two high-profile directors of raping her as a teenager, will address France’s most prestigious film awards ceremony on Friday in an unusual move aimed at breaking what she calls the “omertà” surrounding the abuse of women and girls in the industry. Godrèche, whose autobiographical hit TV show about the grooming of a 14-year-old girl has sparked a national debate, will take to the stage at the César awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars, which is broadcast live on television. Godrèche, 51, has accused the directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon, the former partner of the late singer and actor Jane Birkin, of rape and sexual assault when she was a teenager. She has claimed Jacquot, an acclaimed arthouse director, groomed her in full sight of the French film industry and journalists when they became a couple after he cast her in his 1987 film Les mendiants (The Beggars). At the time she was 14 and he 39. The actor has also accused Doillon of requiring her to perform 45 takes of an unscripted sex scene with him when she was a 15-year-old during the shooting of his 1989 film La fille de 15 ans (The 15 Year Old Girl). After Godrèche told her story in the French press, several other actors came forward with allegations of sexual assault and harassment. Jacquot has denied the accusations and claimed all sexual relations were consenting. Doillon has also denied the accusations, describing them as “lies”. The French film industry has also been shaken by numerous allegations against the actor Gérard Depardieu – already under investigation after a rape accusation – the latest of which emerged last week when a film assistant accused him of sexual assault in 2014. In December there was outrage when 50 artists signed an open letter protesting that Depardieu was being “lynched” and robbed of his right to be presumed innocent. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, also expressed support for the actor in a television interview. Depardieu has denied allegations of rape and sexual assault. “There is a generation that still doesn’t understand this evolution in society,” Muriel Reus, the vice-president of #MeToomedia, an association fighting sexual violence in the media, said at the time. The success of Godrèche’s television series, Icon of French Cinema, has resuscitated France’s #MeToo movement and once again highlighted accounts of sexual abuse of teenage girls by older men in the arts. Vanessa Springora’s 2019 book Consent, about being groomed at the age of 14 by the then 50-year-old writer Gabriel Matzneff in the 1980s, was recently adapted into a film. An investigation into Matzneff for the rape of minors continues. In 2020, Adèle Haenel, who began her career as a child actor, walked out of the César awards ceremony shouting “shame”, after Roman Polanski was awarded best director for his film J’accuse (An Officer and a Spy). Haenel left the French film industry last year, complaining it was riddled with “general complacency” towards sexual predators. Godrèche has been invited to address senators on the women’s rights and equality committee in the upper parliamentary house on 29 February.