BARCELONA.- Three other women claimed to have suffered sexual violence by the director of spanish cinema Carlos Vermut, thus joining the three testimonials initials uncovered a month ago by the newspaper El País, which published another part of its investigation this Tuesday.
The three women, then linked to the cultural sector, maintained some type of relationship with Vermut, a renowned film-maker independent and winner of a Golden Shell at the 2014 San Sebastin Festival, between October 2012 and early January 2024.
During their relationship with him, the 43-year-old director forced them to carry out sexual practices that they had not consented to, according to their testimonies.
“They were very brutal relationships, it hurt me a lot,” one of them told the newspaper.
Another described relationships with: “hits, strangulations, humiliation in their words.” While the third, an actress with whom she had a relationship between last March and January 2024, reported two episodes of non-consensual sexual violence and psychological manipulation in recent months.
Allegations against the filmmaker
As in the first testimonies, these three women, who also wanted to maintain their anonymity, did not report the events to the police for fear of not being believed, according to El País.
The filmmaker – whose real name is Carlos López del Rey – did not react on this occasion, but he did when the first testimonies were published at the end of January. At that time he denied all the accusations and stated that he had not been “aware of having committed sexual violence against any woman.”
“I have always practiced rough sex in a consensual manner,” he then explained to El Pas.
The revelations about Vermut – an independent and respected author since the launch of his second feature film, the award-winning Magical Girla decade ago – had a great impact on Spanish cinema, where numerous figures did not hesitate to show their rejection of what happened.
Violence in Spanish cinema
Shortly after, testimonies also surfaced against another, lesser-known director, Armando Ravelo, among them those of an artist who claimed that he offered him drugs and to watch porn when he was 14 years old.
Following these revelations, the Ministry of Culture announced that it will promote a unit for attention and prevention of sexist violence in the cultural sector.
Since the rise of the #Metoo movement in 2017, which began by denouncing cases of harassment and abuse by powerful men in the entertainment industry in the United States, several figures have been accused or singled out for alleged abusive behavior in several countries.
Spanish cinema had been more or less unscathed by these complaints which, however, exploded in the world of football, with the case of the kiss on the mouth, public and unwanted, that the president of the federation, Luis Rubiales, gave to the soccer player Jenni Hermoso, or the recent sentence to four years and six months in prison of Dani Alves for rape.
FUENTE: AFP
