LJB+ Films

She was thirteen years old when she first met him.
He was forty-nine — famous, powerful, a celebrated writer with prestigious publishers and influential friends woven through the highest circles of French literary life.
She was quiet. Bookish. Her parents had recently separated. Her father was mostly absent. She was the kind of lonely that only a certain kind of teenager knows — not dramatic, not loud, just quietly hungry to be seen.
He saw her.
He began writing her letters. Long, handwritten letters filled with literary references, intellectual conversation, and comparisons to great heroines from classic fiction. He waited outside her school. He gave her books. He told her she was different — exceptional — that their connection existed on a plane ordinary people couldn't understand.
She believed him.
She was fourteen years old.
Adults called her "mature for her age."
That phrase is not a compliment. It never was. It is the oldest permission slip a predator knows how to read.
Gabriel Matzneff read it perfectly.
The abuse lasted two years. And here is what makes this story unlike almost any other: he never hid it.
He wrote about Vanessa in his published diaries — calling her only "V," but with enough detail that anyone who knew her could recognize her. He spoke about his attraction to children on national television. He described what he was doing in published books — and France called it literature.
Publishers printed those books. Literary critics celebrated them as bold and transgressive. The French government gave him awards.
When a journalist named Denise Bombardier appeared on French television in 1990 and called his behavior exactly what it was — child sexual abuse — she was publicly humiliated for it. Prominent French writers mocked her. The studio audience murmured disapproval. Not at the predator. At the woman who dared name him as one.
Matzneff kept his prizes. His books kept selling.
And Vanessa Springora grew up carrying something that had no name in the world she lived in.
It wasn't romance. It wasn't transgression. It wasn't art.
It was grooming — methodical, calculated, patient grooming of a child who had no real capacity to consent, no matter how many adults praised her emotional maturity. She had believed she was choosing. She had not understood that everything she thought she was choosing had been engineered for her by someone who had done it many times before.
For decades, she stayed silent. What was the point? He was celebrated. She was a footnote — a "V" in someone else's acclaimed pages. The institutions that had protected him were still standing. Speaking would only make her the story, the problem, the girl who didn't understand art.
Then, in 2013, she turned on the television and watched Gabriel Matzneff receive the prestigious Renaudot Prize.
Celebrated. Honored. Again.
And something in her made a decision.
She would write her own book.
It took years. She had to find the right language — not revenge, though she was entitled to it. Not accusation, though accusation was deserved. Something more precise and more lasting than both.
She wanted to describe, clearly and without flinching, exactly how grooming works. How admiration becomes manipulation. How love becomes a cage. How a child can be made to feel chosen — when what is actually happening is that she is being hunted.
In January 2020, Vanessa Springora published Le Consentement — Consent.
Paris bookshops sold out within days.
And then the reckoning began.
Publishers pulled Matzneff's books from their shelves. Prosecutors opened a criminal investigation — based entirely on his own writings, which he had never hidden because he had never believed there would be a reckoning. Prize committees faced questions they had avoided for decades. Intellectuals who had once signed petitions defending adult-minor relationships faced a public that was no longer willing to look away.
Gabriel Matzneff quietly relocated to the Italian Riviera.
France had to look at itself. Really look.
How had literary Paris celebrated, for decades, a man who wrote openly about sexually exploiting children? How many people had known? How many had looked away because he was charming, brilliant, connected — and what he produced was considered art?
The answer was uncomfortable: almost everyone had known. And almost everyone had looked away.
One book changed that. One woman, refusing to carry someone else's shame a single day longer.
France subsequently passed legislation establishing a clear age of consent — a legal protection that should have existed all along.
Vanessa Springora did not set out to change the law.
She set out to tell the truth — the whole truth, with her name attached, about what happened to a lonely, bookish girl at a Paris dinner party in 1986.
That girl spent thirty years as a character in someone else's celebrated story. A "V" whose real name didn't matter.
The woman she became took her name back.
She wrote her own story. In her own words. And in doing so, she proved something that every survivor, and everyone who loves a survivor, needs to hear:
It is never too late to speak.
It is never too late to name what happened.
It is never too late to refuse to carry someone else's shame.
The institutions that protect predators are not stronger than the truth.
The reputations built on exploiting the vulnerable are not more important than justice.
And one voice — clear, calm, and certain — can dismantle decades of complicity.
If someone in your life needs to understand how grooming works, why good institutions fail children, or why silence is never the survivor's fault —
this is the story to share with them.

I am so excited that Unleashed, A Love Letter to Survivors, is an official selection in the WRPN Women's International Film Festival and that both the feature and short versions of the film have been nominated for awards at the San Francisco International Film Awards.

Happy and honored that Unleashed, A Love Letter to Survivors was chosen as Best Short Documentary at the LA Women in Film Festival.

I am very honored that Unleashed, A Love Letter to Survivors was recognized as Best Feature Documentary: Human Rights at the COMMFFEST MADA awards. Thanks to Sandie De Freitas and all the wonderful COMMFFEST board members and supporters.

I have just received word that Unleashed, A Love Letter to Survivors (Short) will screen at the Awareness Film Fest in Santa Monica, California, which takes place October 21-26. Stay tuned for details on screen date and time.

Awareness Festival – Films That Do More Than Entertain Through the lenses of independent filmmakers from across the globe, we can ignite profound awareness and inspire change. Their unique perspectives and stories, reveal the world’s intricate tapestry, inviting viewers to see beyond the ordinary and connect with the ultimate essence of our shared hum...

I was delighted to meet the talented women starring in Anton Mitchell's excellent narrative film Roxy.

A wonderful night at the Urban Short Film Festival in Atlanta. We enjoyed many excellent short films and met the talented people involved in making them. The icing on the cake was that Unleashed, a Love Letter to Survivors, won the Spirit Award,

I am so honored that UNLEASHED, A LOVE LETTER TO SURVIVORS has been selected for screening at the 19th annual Manhattan Film Festival next month. More details to come.
Manhattan Film Festival
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Manhattan Film Festival
The 19th annual Manhattan Film Festival will again be hosted at Cinema Village just steps from Union Square. The famous Cinema Village marquee has been featu...

I am very excited to make two announcements.

First, the Short, Unleashed, a Love Letter to Survivors, will make its Texas premiere on April 26, 2025 at 4:00 p.m. at the Memorial City Cinemark Theaters as part of the 58th year of Worldfest Houston International Film Festival, where it has won a Remi Award. Houston friends, I would greatly appreciate your support in coming to see my film. The festival runs from April 24 to May 4, and there are tons of wonderful films to see.

Second, the film will also screen at the Urban Shorts Film Festival--where it has also won an award--in Atlanta the evening of May 17, 2025. Atlanta friends, please come! Tickets are available at EventBrite, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-2nd-annual-urban-short-film-festival-atlanta-tour-2025-tickets-1259632397409.

Covington friends. My film, Unleashed., A Love Letter to Survivors, will screen at the Abita Springs International Film Festial,on Sunday, January 12, in a group of shorts that begins at 10 o’clock. Unleashed is likely to start at around 11:10. I hope you can come.

I am so excited that Unleashed, a Love Letter to Survivors will be included in the Abita Springs International Film Festival, which takes place January 10-12, 2025.