Trialed for alleged sexual assault on June 14, Dominique Boutonnat, the president of the National Film Board, France’s most powerful film institution, is facing a three-year suspended prison sentence.

Boutonnat was indicted in February 2021 for the alleged sexual assault of his then 19-year-old godson in August 2020, during a vacation in Greece. On Friday, at the Nanterre courthouse, the prosecutor requested a three-year suspended prison sentence against Boutonnat who is currently service a second mandate as president of the Cnc. He was re-upped by the French government in 2022 in spite of the fact that he had been indicted on sexual assault charges a year prior. He has denied all accusations. The Cnc said in a statement sent to Variety that the “allegations concern the private sphere and have nothing to do with the Cnc’s activities whose functioning were not affected by the undertaking of the judicial procedure.”

The film executive,...