Filip Nikolic as told by Arnaud

Filip always used to tell me, "I'm Serbian. Homosexuality or bisexuality, in Serbia, it's like saying that rain comes out of the ground, it doesn't exist."
I first met him in a professional setting, it matched pretty fast since the day we met, 3 hours later we had dinner together and then we watched a movie. The shift happened in February 2001, when we went on a trip to New York together. At the time, his ex-partner lived almost all year in Saint Barthélemy, so it was very very good because 8 months out of 12, we were both in Paris. At the time of the birth, well, when Valérie tells Filip that she is pregnant, she says to him, "When I get back, I don't want you to see Arnaud anymore." At the moment when the relationship had to stop by force, in fact, he went into addictions that he didn't have before. I think the cat was 2 and a half, 3 years old, his brother called me to tell me he was not well, I came back immediately and from that day on, we were not separated until the end.

I had kept my promise after Filip's death. I should have perhaps at the time, re-established the truth and defended him. I didn't do it because I wanted to respect my promise regarding Sacha. Today, Sacha is an adult and then, in fact, I said to myself, "This is not honest." Because to do interviews presenting yourself as his wife, his partner, well I don't know, if you were to pass away tomorrow, your ex-husband whom you haven't seen for 2 years, with whom you are a bit on bad terms, is not going to say that you were still a couple. I don't want to tell the real story, I want to tell the story. The last year or year and a half before his death, he did 4-5 cures. He had completely stopped cocaine and by himself at that. So afterwards, addictions came that were stronger and that he had trouble dealing with and that required cures. Alcoholism, the taking of medication, and it's unfortunately the taking of medication that caused his death.

We were in the apartment watching TV, it was 10 p.m., something like that. So that night, he went to sleep in his room, he showed me what he was taking, and actually he showed me one of the molecules he had taken and he had taken less than usual, so I was pretty content. And then, afterwards, we saw on the couch, another molecule that the doctors had given him during his last cure, and he had actually eaten half of that tablet. I don't know why he had hidden it in the cushion. I woke up because at one point, there was some kind of rattling sound. So I heard it around 4, 4:30 in the morning. And my brain didn't necessarily have a bad idea in my head thinking, "There's a problem." At 9 in the morning, when I found that he had already been deceased for several hours, I called the fire department, everyone came to the house, I called his family, his mom was in Serbia so she had to come back, his father, his brother, everyone. For the funeral, I was present, I believe it's me who is carrying the frame of Filip's photo with Valérie's first daughter. So we were united, unfortunately, in what was happening to us. So I asked the question, they couldn't answer why when we said "Everyone is here," they quoted Adel, they quoted Franck, they quoted everyone and me, who lived with him, they didn't quote me.
The video and interview with Arnaud detail the circumstances surrounding Filip Nikolic's death, suggesting it was an accidental overdose of a prescribed medication rather than an intentional act. It also clarifies the relationship between Arnaud and Filip, and the controversy surrounding who was recognized as part of his family after his passing.

Audio to text translation and transcription via Google Gemini