Park City, United States — For more than 20 years, Harvey Weinstein reigned supreme as rainmaker at the Sundance Film Festival, spending millions of dollars to buy up the best in independent cinema.
Now he's back, but in a film detailing his stunning downfall that gives voice to his many sexual assault accusers.
"Untouchable," directed by Ursula Macfarlane, makes no claim to offer shocking new revelations. Rather, it attempts to retrace, as rigorously and scrupulously as possible, both the talent and the decadence of one of the most powerful men in Hollywood -- a man who now awaits trial on charges of rape and sexual aggression.
The Sundance Film Festival, once Weinstein's favorite hunting ground, presented the film's world premiere Friday, just hours after showing "Leaving Neverland," a four-hour-long documentary featuring two young men who say that, as children, they were sexually abused by Michael Jackson.
The alleged victims are also at the heart of "Untouchable." Whether unknown starlets or A-list celebrities, they describe what they say were the abuses, the threats, and the insatiable sexual appetite of Weinstein as he acted without restraint and in seeming impunity.
Among them is the actress Rosanna Arquette, one of the first women to publicly accuse the producer, in an article by reporter Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker magazine.
"It was time," she told AFP on the "black carpet" of the film's premiere. "We were seeing more and more abuse, such abuse of power of a powerful man who can destroy lives in a flash. So it was time."
Arquette, famous for her roles in "Desperately Seeking Susan" and "The Big Blue," said people were beginning to talk about abuse even before the Weinstein scandal erupted in public.
"You had the women of Bill Cosby, and they came out before us, so they spoke. And then we came out," she told AFP.
"Apparently because a lot of us were famous actresses, people went 'What?' And then it started something so huge, and now it is a movement across the world -- everywhere, India, Africa, everywhere." — AFP
