Armenia’s top film festival has sparked controversy by inviting as its guest of honor Kevin Spacey, a two-time Oscar winner who has been shunned by Hollywood since 2017 after facing a flood of allegations of sexual abuse, including of children.
The Golden Apricot Film Festival made the announcement on June 25, calling Spacey “one of the greatest artists of both stage and screen not only of his generation, but, according to many, of all times.”
The news immediately drew broad criticism that the July 7-14 festival, the most prestigious in the region, was allowing Spacey to rehabilitate his image at its expense.
“This is outrageous!” wrote Lara Aharonian, a feminist activist in Yerevan, on X. “What kind of message is [the festival] sending to sexual assault survivors? Harmful and raises ethical questions about values and principles of the organizers.”
Sparking further controversy was news that the city government of Yerevan had helped fund Spacey’s visit. Hayk Kostanian, the press secretary to the mayor of Yerevan, wrote on Facebook that the municipality “has provided financial support…resulting in my favorite actor being in the capital.”
Advocates have argued that the invitation is especially inappropriate in a country that is struggling to better protect victims of sexual abuse. Spacey’s forthcoming appearance in Yerevan “serves as an example that normalizes this sort of behavior and tacitly encourages people to again victimize victims of gender-based violence,” the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Women wrote in a statement. “This behavior, perhaps unwittingly, diminishes the acts of brave individuals who have not been afraid to share their stories in the hope that justice will bring an end to years of painful and silent suffering.”
Spacey was once one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, winning two Oscars: for best supporting actor for The Usual Suspects and for best actor for American Beauty. In 2017, however, he began to face a flood of accusations that he had sexually harassed and assaulted men and boys, some as young as 14. More than 50 accusers came forward, detailing alleged abuse over a span of decades.
Soon after the allegations came out, he was written out of the hit television series he had been starring in, House Of Cards; other projects he had been working on were canceled or rewritten to eliminate his role.
His appearance in Yerevan is part of a gentle return to the public spotlight for Spacey.
In 2022 and 2023, Spacey was legally exonerated of the abuse charges in two separate court cases, and he has sought to again start working.
“There are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges,” he told a German magazine two weeks before the 2023 trial concluded. “The second that happens, they’re ready to move forward.”
Spacey has begun making forays back into the acting world. In the last two years, he has appeared in a handful of low-budget European films, including portraying Croatia’s first postindependence president, Franjo Tudjman, in Once Upon A Time In Croatia, a 2022 docudrama that attempted to burnish the image of the nationalist leader.
He has also been giving interviews to the media, particularly right-leaning outlets, in which he has expressed contrition for his actions.
“I got the memo and I will never, ever, ever behave in those ways again,” he told the Lex Fridman Podcast in June. But he also has denied committing any crimes and has said many of the allegations against him are false.
“That’s so cool,” wrote one Facebook user under the Golden Apricot Facebook post announcing Spacey’s invitation. “And especially cool that none of the wrong accusations were proven. Woke nonsense ended bad for the great actor.”
Organizers of the event defended their decision to invite Spacey.
“Of course, there has been some concern, and many factors have been taken into account, first of all, the acquittal verdicts at the United States and United Kingdom courts, his own attitude towards what happened, his willingness to appear not symbolically as a ‘celebrity,’ but to conduct a professional workshop,” Karen Avetisian, the festival’s artistic director, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service in a statement.
In a subsequent Facebook post, Avetisian acknowledged that what he called inappropriate “flirting styles” and “abusive expressions of passion” were common in Armenia but strove to separate Spacey’s morals from his art.
“Golden Apricot is not a humanitarian organization but a film festival where we, being deeply convinced that it is a myth that a good artist is the same as a virtuous man, honor not the worthy, but the worthy artists, and we judge not the man but his art,” he said.
