Cécile Delarue: “In terms of virality, the Depp-Heard affair is comparable to #MeToo: it’s not an American story but a global one”

Your film goes back to the media’s starting point of the affair, in 2016, when Amber Heard, who had just filed for divorce, left a Los Angeles court with a swollen face. This image immediately provokes hostile reactions towards this woman without seriously calling into question the reputation of her ex, Johnny Depp.

Cecile Delarue. At this point, we are a year before #MeToo. The view of violence against women was not the same as today. The general opinion still considered these bruises on the face as the illustration of dissolute Hollywood mores, something a little rock’n’roll. If this image had appeared in the aftermath of the Weinstein affair, it would have aroused a different emotion. Not only was Amber Heard a victim a year too early, but she suffered from the indifference of the traditional media from the start: she was a starlet whose setbacks were barely good enough to fuel the people gazettes. This context has created fertile ground for attracting conspiracy theorists of all kinds. They took advantage of this gigantic buzz to spread their ideas around the world in a more or less underground way. The case has notably boosted the delusional speeches of Andrew Tate, this masculinist influencer arrested last December for human trafficking in Romania.

This unlikely guy churns out nonsense very quickly and very loudly. He knows how to format them so that they can be taken over en masse by the