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Dominique Strauss-Kahn to sue makers of Gerard Depardieu sex addiction film Welcome to New York

DSK was accused of sexual assault by a hotel maid in New York in 2011

John Lichfield
Monday 19 May 2014 15:57 BST
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Gérard Depardieu stars as Mr Devereaux (or could it be Mr Strauss-Kahn?) in ‘Welcome to New York’
Gérard Depardieu stars as Mr Devereaux (or could it be Mr Strauss-Kahn?) in ‘Welcome to New York’ (Nicole Rivelli)

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The disgraced former IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, plans to sue the makers of a new film allegedly based on the saga of his arrest for rape in New York in 2011.

Mr Strauss-Kahn’s lawyer, Jean Veil, said his client would “bring an action for defamation in the next few days”.

The film, Welcome to New York, starring Gérard Depardieu, is available on the internet through “video on demand” and will be released in cinemas in Britain – but not France – next month.

The French economist and presidential candidate in the movie, “Mr Devereux”, sexually assaults a chambermaid in a Manhattan hotel.

Mr Strauss-Kahn was cleared of alleged rape in September 2011. He has admitted to committing a “moral fault” and having a sexual encounter but has always denied that any attack took place.

Mr Veil yesterday described the film, launched in the fringes of he Cannes film festival at the weekend, as “a piece of shit…a dog dropping”. He also alleged that the movie had an “an anti-semitic side”.

In the film, the wife of “Mr Devereux”,played by Jacqueline Bisset, is a wealthy Franco-jewish woman who is said to come from a family which made a fortune from World War Two. Mr Strauss-Kahn’s ex wife, the journalist Anne Sinclair, comes from a Franco-jewish family whose art collection and other as property was stolen by the Nazis.

In a comment on the film in the French version of the Huffington Post news website which she edits Ms Sinclair also accused the film of anti-semitsim. She said, however, that she had no plans to sue.

“I don’t attack filth, I spit it out,” she wrote.

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