“Stop Raping Us”: Topless Woman’s Ukraine Protest On Cannes Red Carpet
The Ukraine crisis is at the center stage at the Cannes Film Festival 2022. Following an emotive video message from Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during the Cannes Film Festival’s opening ceremony, a woman denouncing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine staged a protest on the red carpet on Day 4 of the festival.
On the red carpet, an unidentified woman took off her robe, displaying the Ukraine flag painted on her naked chest, the words “stop raping us” scribbled on her belly, and red handprints on various parts of her body.
“Don’t rape us!” shouted the woman as security surrounded her and escorted her off the red carpet.
Security personnel promptly wrapped her in a jacket and escorted her away from the event. The guests were perplexed, and the swinging festival music continued to play.
The event occurred on Friday at the red carpet for the opening of director George Miller’s film “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” which stars Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba.
The war has already been a major theme at the festival, with a special screening on Thursday of “Mariupolis 2”, a documentary by Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius, who was killed in Ukraine last month — reportedly by Russian forces.
Ukraine’s beleaguered film-makers will get a special day at the industry marketplace on Saturday, and one of its most promising directors, Sergei Loznitsa, will show “The Natural History of Destruction”, about the bombing of German cities in World War II.
The French feminist group SCUM, self-described as “radical feminist activists and universalist blasphemers,” said on Instagram that one of their members went to the festival to “denounce the sexual torture suffered by Ukrainian women in the war.”
The United Nations has called for the increasing reports of rape and sexual violence against Ukrainian women and children during the Russian invasion of Ukraine to be independently investigated.
