The 77th Cannes film festival reaches its climax on Saturday when all eyes will be on the Croisette, as the winners of the prestigious Palme d’Or are announced. Hollywood greats such as Meryl Streep, Jane Fonda and Greta Gerwig have been in town, but this year, I found myself on the red carpet, hand in hand with some of the most courageous women in the business.

Behind the facade of movie-star glamour and fashionable edge, there are burning issues that have been agitating the grande famille du cinéma in France for years – but have been kept out of sight. The Cannes festival, as a symbol of the French film establishment, can no longer shy away from them.

Actor-director Judith Godrèche has emerged as one of the most outspoken voices of the French #MeToo movement. She invited me to walk alongside her and the crew of her new short film Moi Aussi (Me Too), which she was presenting to the Cannes audience. In unusual silence, we stood on the steps to the Palais des Festivals covering our mouths to symbolise the silencing of sexual abuse survivors.

When Judith was 14, the entire French film world knew her, not only as a promising young acting talent but also as the partner of the acclaimed, and then middle-aged, arthouse film-maker Benoît Jacquot. Nobody seemed to think it in any way strange or sordid. As a teenage film actor she received no adult support, she has said. An “omertà” prevailed in the industry.

It took decades before the adult Godrèche, as the mother of a teenager, publicly reconsidered her story and decided to share her perspective. Using a TV drama series based on her life, called Icon of French Cinema, and a range of media interviews, she relabelled the so-called relationship as what she called grooming and sexual assault – realising, she said, that as a minor she could never have given consent. In February 2024, she filed a complaint for the alleged rape of a minor against Jacquot. He denies the allegations.

After sharing her adolescent experience on France Inter, the most listened-to radio station in France, Godrèche received a flood of testimonies from other women. This inspired her to create an email address to collect the stories of “each and every one of you who has been abused”.

She received 5,000 personal accounts and launched another call on Instagram to organise a gathering of 1,000 people who would be part of her film, representing survivors of all forms of sexist or sexual abuse. As she had contacted me to be involved, I witnessed the impressive surge of a human wave on a Paris avenue, standing up together to say no to sexual violence.

A few days before the Cannes festival, Godrèche succeeded in getting a commission of inquiry into sexual violence in cinema established. This had been one of her demands when she gave evidence to a hearing at the French national assembly in March. It was an incredible turn of events in a country that has often been hostile to the #MeToo movement.

In the name of its “cultural exception” and the idea of seduction à la française, France been deeply reluctant to address the structural sexism that shapes the film industry. Its early response to the global #MeToo movement launched in 2017 after the Harvey Weinstein scandal was shameful. A hundred high-profile figures from the world of film and entertainment, including Catherine Deneuve, published an open letter in support of men’s “freedom to annoy”. It read like an attempt to airbrush decades of systemic abuse perpetrated by men in the industry shielded by artistic licence.

The Cannes festival has failed to either represent women fairly (even now, in 2024, only four films directed by female film-makers are in the running for the Palme d’Or) or to address complaints of sexual abuse.

A few days before last year’s festival, the actor Adèle Haenel announced that she was quitting the industry to be free “to denounce the general sense of complacency towards sexual abusers”. For years, Haenel has been one of the leading voices of the #MeToo movement. She first spoke out in 2019 against the film-maker who allegedly assaulted her when she was a 12-year-old child actor. In 2020, when Roman Polanski – who fled the US in 1978 to avoid being sentenced for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old minor – was announced as the winner of the best director category at the Césars (the French Oscars), she spectacularly walked out.

Backing her, 123 actors issued an open letter on the 2023 festival’s opening day, to express their “outrage” at an event that “rolls out the red carpet for men and women who assault” and sends a message of “impunity”.

This year, in anticipation of another festival ignoring the systemic nature of sexual abuse and violence, a hundred women (including many celebrities from the cinema industry) appeared on the front page of Le Monde backing a petition in favour of new French laws to clarify the definition of rape and consent. Despite the increase in complaints post-#MeToo, in France a shocking 94% of rape accusations are still dismissed without further action.

So the 2024 festival has had to adopt a different tone. Host of the opening and closing ceremonies, Camille Cottin, the star of Call My Agent!, addressed a culture at Cannes that had been swept under the rug for years: “I’d like to point out that nocturnal rendezvous in the hotel rooms of all-powerful men are no longer part of the habits and customs of this Cannes vortex following the adoption of the #MeToo movement, and we’re delighted.”

It was a strong and welcome intervention, but one that still failed to represent all women. The poster for Moi Aussi shows an overwhelmingly white crowd, and I could tell attending the shooting that many of the women who identify with Godrèche are white women in their 40s or 50s. Black actor Nadège Beausson-Diagne, who since 2019 has repeatedly denounced the violence she has endured in the industry, published an article expressing how tired she was of being constantly made invisible by her white counterparts.

In the national reckoning with systemic patriarchy, the voices of women of colour are still missing. And besides the well-known faces of those women who can access the media to share their experiences, millions of others, invisible to the mainstream, face abuse.

The #MeToo movement was not started by celebrities from Hollywood, but by Tarana Burke, a Black social worker from Harlem, even if it took years for the media to finally speak her name.

It is time for women of colour, indeed all women, to be moved from margin to centre, to borrow the words of the radical feminist bell hooks. Cannes represents an important cultural phenomenon. It must not settle for fine words and glitzy screenings. After nearly 80 years of self-congratulation, it is time to banish old ways and commit to genuine change.

• Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist

• Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.