Icon of French Cinema is a surreal comedy about a French film star who returns to Paris after a decade in LA expecting a glorious comeback, but ends up playing a singing hamster. The series has become France’s biggest streaming hit this year, sparking outraged debate about the French cinema establishment failing to face up to #MeToo. And through flashbacks, it tells a darker, autobiographical story about how Judith Godrèche, the show’s writer, director and lead actor, was groomed as a 14-year-old in the 1980s by one of France’s top film directors.
“I had to tell this story for the next generation,” says Godrèche, now living back in Paris. “My own daughter had turned 15, she was a dancer and actor at an LA arts school. She was walking around in her leotard, and I had this fear. I thought, ‘What happened to me must not ever happen to her.’ I had to write this for her and her friends. For all the young girls.”
