Daniela Elstner, managing director of French cinema and TV export agency Unifrance, has filed a police complaint against French actor and singer and actor Patrick Bruel, accusing him of attempted rape and sexual assault dating back to an alleged incident from 1997.
Elstner has spoken publicly about her experience in the past, including with The Hollywood Reporter, but declined to name Bruel, saying only that the alleged attacker was a high-profile figure in the film industry. She filed the complaint on March 12. On Wednesday, French investigative news website Mediapart named Elstner as one of eight women who have accused Bruel of sexual violence in incidents from between 1992 and 2019.
Mediapart reported that a second woman lodged a complaint for rape against Bruel, for an incident alleged to have taken place at the Dinard British Film Festival in 2012, when Bruel was president of the jury.
Elstner’s complaint claims Bruel assaulted her during Unifrance’s French Film Festival in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1997. Elstner was then 26 and working as an assistant at Unifrance. Bruel was attending the festival to promote the French thriller K, in which he starred alongside Isabella Ferrari and Marthe Keller. Speaking to Mediapart, Elstner said Bruel pushed her into a VIP car and forced himself on her, kissing and fondling her as she protested.
“I remember the Mexican driver’s smiles in the rearview mirror as I struggled, and Patrick Bruel’s words, which were more or less: ‘Who are you? Nobody will believe you. You’re nothing. Do you know who I am?’” Elstner told Mediapart. “That sentence affected me as much as the physical assault, because it was very clearly intended to tell me that I didn’t exist. The car drove back up to the bungalow; it felt like the journey lasted forever.”
Elstner said Bruel then bundled her into his room, but that she managed to escape, with much struggling and screaming. Speaking to Mediapart, Bruel’s lawyer Christophe Ingrain denied all allegations against his client. Bruel, Ingrain is quoted as saying, “never forced anyone into a sexual act or relationship,” and “never overruled a refusal.”
Although not an international star, Bruel is a household name in France, with several chart-topping albums and dozens of television and film credits, including What’s in a Name? (2012) and The Best Is Yet to Come (2019).
The Mediapart investigation outlines earlier allegations against Bruel, including, from 2019, complaints lodged by women working as masseuses in different luxury spas across France who accused the actor of sexual violence. Those cases were dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Speaking to Mediapart, Elstner’s lawyer Jade Dousselin said her client made the “painful and significant decision” to file an official complaint against Bruel, well aware that the statute of limitations for the alleged crimes has expired. “Her approach today is less about seeking condemnation than about seeking liberation.”
The allegations against Bruel come amid an industry-wide reckoning with sexual harassment and abuse in France. French star Gérard Depardieu was convicted last May of sexually assaulting two members of a film production crew and was placed on a list of sex offenders, but not jailed. He has been ordered to stand trial on a separate case, involving the alleged rape and sexual assault of actress Charlotte Arnould. Depardieu has denied the charges.
In 2024, nine women publicly accused veteran French producer Alain Sarde of rape and sexual assault in a detailed expose published in the French edition of Elle magazine. Sarde has denied the charges, and he has not been formally charged with any criminal activity.
