French actress Adèle Haenel announced her “cinema freeze” with a bang in a letter to Télérama on Tuesday, denouncing “the complacency” of the 7th Art towards sexual aggressors as well as “the way he works together”. with capitalism.
Three years after she left the Salle des César to defy Roman Polanski’s coronation, the Fighters actress – overwhelmed by old rape allegations – wants to “denounce the general complacency of the profession “. towards sexual aggressors and (…) the way this medium collaborates with the deadly racist ecocide world order”.
“In the context of an historic social movement, we’re waiting to see if the big names in cinema – like the sponsors of the luxury industry – count on the police to ensure that everything goes as usual on the red carpets of the Cannes Film Festival.”, she continues a week before opening.
“Filling the media space with wind aims to make the bourgeois order as natural as the blue of the sky and to make the voices of those who organize the resistance inaudible and marginal (…). Continuing to make this system desirable is criminal,” she adds.
“But you and everyone together shake hands at this time to save face for the Depardieus, the Polanskis, the Boutonnats,” adds Adèle Haenel, quoting the famous actor, director and head of the National Cinema Center (CNC ). all are accused of sexual violence, which they deny.
At the end of 2019, the two-Césars-winning actress broke the omerta in French cinema by denouncing director Christophe Ruggia’s “encroachment” as a teenager, leading to her charge of “sexually assaulting a minor”.
In 2021, Adèle Haenel provided voice acting for the adaptation of Didier Eribon’s novel Return to Reims, which was released in cinemas, but her career otherwise stalled. She says she now wants to continue her theatrical collaboration with Gisèle Vienne, a contemporary director.