French filmmaker Maiwenn, who last year made Johnny Depp's comeback film about King Louis XV, was convicted and fined on Tuesday (16) for attacking a journalist. Maiwenn, who no longer uses the surname Le Besco, said she was angered by an article on news website Mediapart about her ex-husband, filmmaker Luc Besson (“The Fifth Element”), who faced a rape investigation that was later dropped. In February last year , she saw Edwy Plenel, head of Mediapart, in a restaurant, grabbed him by the hair and spat in his face. On Tuesday, a Paris court fined her 400 euros for the assault and ordered her to pay compensation of 1,500 euros to Mediapart and a symbolic euro to Plenel. The incident increased the controversy surrounding the launch of his film “Jeanne du Barry – The King's Favorite” at the Cannes Film Festival in May, which marked the return of Johnny Depp following accusations of assault made by his ex-wife, Amber Heard, which made him a pariah in Hollywood. “I'm not very sorry and I don't regret anything,” Maiwenn said outside the courtroom. The filmmaker maintains that Mediapart caused a “tsunami” in his life by publishing details of a police interview he gave as part of the investigation into Besson, who is also the father of his son. “Mediapart knew very well that I did not want to express myself on this matter. I am the victim,” he said. Plenel told the court that he was “shocked” by the attack. “A person I didn’t know anywhere pulled my hair and spat in my face,” he said, adding that it was “the first time in my professional career that I was physically attacked.”
