The actress, absent from film sets since 2020, talks about the political commitments that have taken precedence over her job.
She speaks of a “strike”, but her words sound like a retirement. In a letter addressed to Telerama and published this Tuesday by the weekly, the actress Adèle Haenel explains the reasons for her desertion from film sets since her political coup at the César three years ago. In particular, she accuses the film industry of being complacent towards sexual predators.
On the evening of the 2020 edition of the awards ceremony, the star of Portrait of the girl on fire had left the Salle Pleyel in the middle of the ceremony when the César for best director returned to Roman Polanski, despite the numerous accusations of sexual violence against him. Adèle Haenel herself, a few months earlier, had accused director Christophe Ruggia of having abused her when she was between 12 and 15 years old.
“I decided to politicize my stop of the cinema to denounce the general complacency of the profession vis-à-vis sexual aggressors and, more generally, the way in which this medium collaborates with the deadly racist ecocide order of the world as it is. is”, writes the 34-year-old artist in the preamble.
The one who accuses the cinema of wanting to remain “light” while “biodiversity is collapsing, the militarization of Europe is racing, hunger and misery continue to spread”, continues: “Fill with wind the media space has a goal, that of making the bourgeois order as natural as the blue of the sky and of making inaudible, marginal, the voices of those who organize the resistance so that all humans can live with dignity and who try to snatch a future from this planet.”
“It bothers them that the victims make too much noise”
She accuses the world of cinema of “joining hands to save face of the Depardieus (accused of sexual violence by thirteen women, editor’s note), the Polanskis, the Boutonnats (president of the CNC, accused of sexual assault on his godson, editor’s note “It bothers them, it bothers them that the victims make too much noise, they preferred that we continue to disappear and die in silence. They are ready to do anything to defend their chief rapists, those who are so rich that they believe of a superior species (…)”.
“You won’t have me as a spectator. I’m canceling you from my world. I’m leaving, I’m going on strike, I’m joining my comrades for whom the search for meaning and dignity takes precedence over that of money and power .”
If she no longer finds herself in the cinema, an industry of “detached, “vacuity” and “cruelty”, Adèle Haenel assures that she has not abandoned her artistic fiber: she explains that she collaborates with the artist Gisèle Vienne, Franco-Austrian choreographer, visual artist and director.
As specified Teleramathis letter reached the magazine while it was investigating the cinematic disappearance by Adele Haenel. In recent months, the actress has taken part in the social movement against the pension reform. At the end of March, in particular, she went to Normandy to support the strikers at the Total refinery.
