Seen during the last mobilizations against the pension reform, the actress Adèle Haenel, explains in a letter published on the Télérama site, the reasons for her withdrawal from French cinema.
Actress Adèle Haenel, César for Best Actress in 2015 for The fighters and known for her feminist, social and ecological struggles, announced his cessation of cinema in a forum at Télérama (paid article) Tuesday, May 9. For the first time since her sensational exit from the César 2020 ceremony, she agreed to speak out to denounce “the general complacency of the profession vis-à-vis sexual aggressors and, more generally, the way whose environment collaborates with the deadly racist ecocidal order of the world as it is”.
The cultural magazine Telerama, for a journalistic investigation, sought to know if his absence from the screens for three years was suffered or chosen. Following his requests, the 34-year-old actress answered many questions.
Too “light” cinema
In this letter, she first of all denounces a cinema which seems to be too “light” in front of “the collapsing biodiversity, the militarization of Europe which is racing and the hunger and misery which are spreading“. Adèle Haenel asks herself a question: “What is this obsession of the world of cinema (…) above all to talk about “nothing”?”. Then she continues by pointing to a bourgeois inter-self, far from reality and responsible according to her for preventing the expression of voices of revolt. “Filling the media space with wind has a purpose, that of making the bourgeois order also natural as the blue of the sky and to render inaudible, marginal, the voices of those who organize the resistance so that all humans can live with dignity and who are trying to wrest a future from this planet”.
In November 2019, Adèle Haenel spoke on Mediapart by revealing to have been the victim of touching and sexual harassment by the director Christophe Ruggia. This interview was first “a question of survival”, she explained. It happened first “without necessarily being publicized, in the intimate sphere, in an almost secret way”, adds the actress. The actress of Portrait of the girl on fire take advantage today of these few lines to accuse the world of cinema of turning a blind eye to the actions of alleged sexual aggressors: “But they and they all together during this time join hands to save the face of the Depardieus, the Polanskis, the Boutonnats. It bothers them, it bothers them that the victims make too much noise, they preferred that we continue to disappear and die in silence.
“I Cancel You From My World”
For all these reasons, Adèle Haenel announces her withdrawal from the seventh art, which is eminently political: “Faced with the bourgeoisie’s monopoly of speech and finances, I have no other arms than my body and my integrity.(…) I cancel you from my world. I leave, I go on strike, I join my comrades for whom the search for meaning and dignity takes precedence over that of
money and power”.
The actress ends her letter by stating that since 2019, she has been pursuing a “artistic work in the theatrical and choreographic collaboration with Gisèle Vienne“. His departure from the Cesar ceremony in 2020, after the coronation of Roman Polanski, was a real turning point. “Faced with the detachment, vacuity and cruelty that the film industry sets up as an operating principle, the meaning, the work and the beauty she constantly brings into play are a light that allows me to keep
faith in what the power of art can mean“, she concludes.