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Jared Leto faces new sexual misconduct accusations from multiple women, with some of the allegations occurring when the women were teenagers.

On Wednesday, the BBC revealed that in total 10 women have come forward with allegations against the Oscar-winning actor and frontman of rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars as part of a new BBC documentary titled Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.

Four of the women have accused Leto of criminal sexual conduct, all occurring when they were teenagers, according to the BBC. The allegations against the 54-year-old stem from incidents between 2002 and 2016.

In the BBC report, one of the women claims she was sexually assaulted by Leto in a motel bathroom when she was 17.

A second woman says Leto threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19, after being “unexpectedly” left alone with him in a hotel.

The third woman reveals she had sex with Leto when she was 17 in California, in a state where she would have been underage and the act classified as statutory rape. This same woman also claims she had a conversation with the actor about her age and he “shrugged off” concerns about California’s age of consent.

The fourth woman claims she groomed by Leto, saying he “abused his celebrity status by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls to her when she was 16.” She adds that on at least one occasion, Leto suggested they should have sex. This fourth woman also alleges that she was subsequently sent a non-disclosure agreement to prevent her from talking about her relationship with Leto, but that she refused to sign it. The BBC says it has seen the NDA.

A fifth woman claims that when she was 14, Leto had made a lewd comment about her chest during an autograph-signing event and then instructed a security guard to take her backstage at a music festival. The woman claims her mother confronted Leto at the time, but the actor repeated the lewd comment.

An additional four women claim they received calls from Leto when they were younger that were “strange and often very sexual.”

The BBC says it has “corroborated” a number of the women’s accounts with friends and family who were told about the encounters with Leto at the time. In some cases, the British broadcaster states, reporters have also seen pictures and messages that support the claims.

Two men who worked with Leto’s band told the documentary staff were “uncomfortable” about the way Leto would interact with teenage girls. They say he would sometimes invite them backstage to his dressing room or invite them to the house where he was recording. “I think everyone thought the age gap was way too big,” one of the men, unnamed in the BBC report, says.

The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Jared Leto’s reps for comment on the investigation, but had yet to hear back when this story was published.

Sexual misconduct allegations have long dogged the Dallas Buyers Club and Tron star. In June 2025, Leto‘s reps denied that the actor engaged in sexual misconduct or inappropriate relationships with women after an Air Mail exposé. That investigative report contained interviews with nine women, the majority of whom are anonymous. They alleged that Leto behaved inappropriately with them, and some say they were underage at the time they came in contact with the actor.

The Air Mail piece also published a viral Twitter post shared by actor Dylan Sprouse in 2018. It reads: “Yo Jared Leto, now that you’ve slid into the DMs of every female model aged 18-25, what would you say your success rate is?” Filmmaker and DC chief James Gunn replied: “He starts at 18 on the internet?”

The Locarno Film Festival, whose 79th edition takes place Aug. 5-15, always features world premieres from around the world by established and up-and-coming auteurs, new hidden gems and cinematic discoveries, along with highlights from the festival circuit.

But audiences can also expect the unexpected. After all, Locarno also features quirky, edgy and offbeat movies just waiting to unspool.

So, buckle up for a ride on the wilder and more unorthodox side of the cinematic spectrum as THR presents its look at some of the more unusual-sounding films at Locarno79.

Wandering Trees (Alberi erranti)
Director: Salvatore
Section: International competition

Once upon a time in Sardinia. Piero and his son Giuliano lived alone in a farmhouse filled with injured animals that they cared for. But the local notables wanted to drive them out because they lived like vagrants. One day, snow fell, and Piero disappeared, while the animals were killed. So, Giuliano had no choice but to search for his father. On his journey, he met Maddalena, and it was love at first sight.

Giuliano’s dreamlike search across a wounded landscape explores the wonder and special experience of childhood, a time in life that provides a possibility of resistance against the violence of the adult world.

The filmmaker puts it into magical images – and words. “To tell a love story, you mustn’t be afraid to open up emotionally,” says Mereu, who also wrote the script with Alberto Capitta, in a director’s note. “But to embark on a fairy tale, you need to risk something. When you accept its rules, you have to accept everything – even the unthinkable.”

Objet A
Director: Ann Oren
Section: International competition

Ready for a bold, playful and stylized excursion into fragile relationships between humans as well as humans and nature, intimacy, desire, identity – and kleptomania – that uses the body as the core of its cinematic language? Well, Objet A is ready to bend your mind and leave you unsettled!

“Ingeborg and Adam are visionary hand surgeons bound by love, control and irresistible fixations,” teases a synopsis. But there is more: “She is compelled to steal objects; he longs to become one. When an accident brings the enigmatic Gaia into their lives, unexpected desires begin to take shape, unsettling the careful balance that has long defined their relationship.”

Berlin-based visual artist and filmmaker Ann Oren (Piaffe) returns to Locarno to serve up a film, which she wrote with Geoffroy Grison, that features cinematography by Juan Sarmiento G. (The Voice of Hind Rajab, A Poet) and editing by Hansjörg Weißbrich (Rose, Late Shift). It stars Aenne Schwarz (All Is Well, Every You Every Me) as Ingeborg, Louis Hofmann (All the Light We Cannot See, The Forger, Dark), and Simone Bucio (Piaffe, The Ivy) as Gaia. “I’m interested in human desire and how it connects us to other species,” Oren says in a director’s note. “The human body is the starting point for my cinematic language: the more control we have over it, the more we separate ourselves from the natural world.”

Bloody Tennis
Director: Nikias Chryssos
Section: Out of competition

The world of elite sports is taken to disturbing new heights full of brutality and painful ambition in the new film from Nikias Chryssos (The Bunker, Rave On, A Pure Place). “Sophie joins a prestigious tennis academy where the brutality of competitive sports is taken to its extreme, and only the hungriest survive,” warns a synopsis.

Sandra Guldberg Kampp (Assassin’s Creed, Electric Child), Helena Zengel (News of the World, The Legend of Ochi, System Crasher) and others star in the movie, along with Elina Löwensohn (Schindler’s List), and Zlatko Burić (Triangle of Sadness), with an original score by Jim Williams (Titane, Raw).

If that’s not enough for you yet, the press notes also promise, or should that be: threaten, “blood-sucking leeches, hard-hitting serves and delicious nightmares.” Game on!

Bakma
Abdelhamid Bouchnak
Section: Out of competition

You have surely never seen Tunisia like this. And you likely haven’t seen a film from Tunisia like this before. What Bouchnak unleashes onto Locarno screens is an urban horror thriller, which he also wrote and edited, with cinematography by Chams Ghorab.

Animalistic violence takes on a different meaning in this movie. Commissioner Ali and Khaled investigate the ritualistic murder of a young woman. So far, so horrible. But there is more, as a synopsis highlights: “Her limbs have been severed, her head is missing, and in its place, the killer has grotesquely sewn the head of a dog.”

Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, in unveiling this year’s festival lineup, highlighted said about Bakma: “It’s a film that, in a very specific way, addresses the political corruption in Tunis at the moment. It’s also a very bitter commentary on what’s left of the so-called Arab Spring that ignited the overthrow of some regimes – and, as you’ll remember, it originated in Tunis.”

Tomorrow a Long Time Ago (Morgen vor langer Zeit)
Director: Luise Donschen
Section: Filmmakers of the Present Competition

Not much dialogue is used, or needed, in the new film from Donschen (Casanovagen), which stars Gerti Drassl and Manuela Biedermann and others. After all, life and actions say more than words.

Amid German reunification in 1990, the 50-year-old Patty first loses her job and then her friend Jelena. “In a small East German town, she collects discarded objects and meets the younger Franz,” teases a synopsis. “When her flat becomes so full of belongings that she can no longer enter it, she sets out into a colorful forest. A journey through landscapes and history begins, carrying away more than just her.”

The movie has a personal dimension for the filmmaker who grew up in the GDR. “Inspired by my childhood experience of German reunification, the film captures the moment when the present splits into ‘before’ and ‘after’,” the moment when everything seems completely unseen and very familiar at the same time.”

Donkey Princess (Princesa Burro)
Directors: Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña
Section: International competition

Once upon a time… wait a second, isn’t that how we started this journey into the mind- and genre-bending films at Locarno79!? But wait, this one is different, although love plays a key role again.

Diana is the princess of an ancient kingdom. Her father, King Arthur, has forbidden love. So, when Diana falls in love with Lalo, the King banishes him. A synopsis teases where things go from here: “Using a magical bracelet, Diana travels to other worlds in search of her love. Discovering that her father manipulates her decisions, she must face her fears and change her destiny.”

The travels of the protagonist allow the director duo to play with the look and feel of the places she visits. “Diana travels through parallel worlds where each universe transforms the film’s genre,” León and Cociña explain. “The film brings this constant mutation of realities into live action, where fantasy reshapes everything.”

So, who’s ready for a cinematic trip!?

World soccer governing body FIFA and its controversial CEO Gianni Infantino are under fire over plans to sell off a stake in FIFA’s commercial operations to private equity investors.

The plan would see FIFA set up a new entity, called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), that would bundle all the money-making operations associated with the soccer World Cup — including broadcast rights, sponsorship, ticket sales and licensing fees — and sell a significant stake in the new operation to private investors. FIFA is valuing the new commercial venture at around $20 billion.

After news of the plan broke on Tuesday, FIFA confirmed it is working with U.S. investment bank JP Morgan to set up the new entity. Thrive Capital, an investment company founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is leading the search for investors.

The backlash was immediate.

European soccer governing body UEFA condemned the plan, saying the sport “isn’t FIFA’s to sell.”

“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” UEFA said in a statement. “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially.”

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham joined the fray, taking to social media to post that “football does not belong to investors. It belongs to the people who fill the stands and who stand on the touchline week in, week out, rain or shine. The World Cup is not a product. It is the greatest competition in world sport, and it was never anyone’s to sell. Dress the deal up however you like. Once you have sold a piece of it, you have sold out.”

FIFA says the FFE could raise an additional $10 billion for its member organizations, the 211 national soccer leagues that make up the association. If members approve the plan, FIFA said it could more than double funding to its member associations from $8 million to $20 million a year, a huge sum for the majority of FIFA members. Infantino defended the plan as a way to spread the wealth generated by the World Cup globally. “This is about the democratization of football worldwide,” he said in a statement.

Others see a money grab.

FIFA and Infantino have been sharply criticized for the commercialization of the recent World Cup, held in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. FIFA expanded the event from 32 to 48 teams, greatly increasing the number of games, allowed a pricey resale market for tickets, and introduced controversial “hydration breaks” which stopped play and allowed for additional advertising during matches. The 2026 tournament was the most lucrative in history, with FIFA expected to announce revenues of more than $15 billion for the event.

Given Joshua Kushner’s connection, via his brother, to President Trump, many also see a potential political conflict of interest.

Infantino already has close ties to the U.S. President. After Trump complained about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Infantino invented the “FIFA Peace Prize” and then awarded it to POTUS in December.

UEFA claims FIFA undermined the integrity of this year’s World Cup when it intervened to overturn a red card given to USA striker Falorin Balogun after Trump called and asked Infantino to do so.

This week, Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, launched an investigation into Infantino and FIFA’s ties to Trump’s administration and businesses.