Adele Haenel shakes French cinema
Adele Haenel shakes French cinema
Sexual harassmentThe young actress, who has publicly denounced the abuses of a director, arouses a wave of emotion.
French actress Adèle Haenel, both Caesar.
A turning point? The statements of the actress Adèle Haenel, who told the "touching" and "harassment" she suffered teenager, raise a wave of emotion that could help break the omerta around these issues in French cinema , two years after the launch of the #MeToo movement.
The 30-year-old French actress, awarded by two Cesar, has questioned the director Christophe Ruggia, with whom she shot, at the age of 13, his first film "The Devils", in a survey published Sunday by Mediapart.
She recounted the "grip" he had over her during the preparation and filming of the film, then "permanent sexual harassment", repeated "touching" and "forced kisses in the neck" that would have occurred. at home and at several international festivals, all while she was 12 to 15 years old.
The director of "Gone du Chaâba", 54, "categorically denied", through his lawyers, "having harassed or any kind of touching" on her.
Christophe Ruggia struck off
Adèle Haenel then explained, in a program broadcast live Monday on the site Médiapart, she spoke because "the world has changed."
"I have to be able to talk to everyone who has spoken in the #MeToo business," she said.
"Today, it's a responsibility for me, because I'm able to do it, because I'm working hard enough ...", she added, then saying, "Monsters do not matter." does not exist. It's our society, it's us, it's our friends, it's our fathers. That's what we have to watch. "
The Society of Film Directors (SRF), a professional association with some 300 members, announced on Monday that it had decided to strike Christophe Ruggia out and "expressed his full support" to Adèle Haenel.
Tuesday, it is Unifrance, the body responsible for the promotion of French cinema abroad, which in turn gave him his support and "condemned without reserve any violence or inappropriate behavior".
The organization also announced that it would develop "a charter soon for the attention of artists and professionals brought to participate in the events organized or initiated by Unifrance".
"A silence so heavy"
The testimony of Adèle Haenel has also generated a flood of reactions on social networks, among which messages of support within the 7th Art.
"A great admiration for Adèle Haenel, who speaks for those who are in the shadows ...", testified the actress Julie Gayet on Instagram.
"Adèle, your courage is a gift of unparalleled generosity", posted the Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard. "You break a silence so heavy."
His statements are indeed the effect of a thunderclap in French cinema. If other actresses have testified against directors or producers, none, as famous as she, had so far discovered, with a story supported by witnesses who reveal their identity.
"I think it's a kind of turning point. This is the first time in France that an internationally known actress, who works a lot and has a rating of hell, speaks on this subject there, "says the journalist Véronique Le Bris, founder of the site cine-woman.fr for whom "it will inevitably have consequences".
"I do not know if that will be enough, but it's still a step," she added.
For the academic Iris Brey, specialist of the representation of the genre in the cinema, "until now, in France, one did not really want to have these conversations post #MeToo".
Courage by Adèle Haenel
"This story finally comes to us, and it finally arrives in our heart. And that's the way we make things change, "she added on Monday live on Mediapart.
For the producer Marc Missonnier, vice-president of the Union of Film Producers (UPC), who "hailed" Adèle Haenel's "courage" on Twitter, "if his initiative can effectively contribute to inhibitions jumping or that fears are overwhelmed for people to speak, it would be great.
"But will that be the case? I do not know at all, "he tempered. In any case, "we can not pretend that nothing has happened".