Adèle Haenel breaks her silence ten days after the end of Christophe Ruggia’s trial. On Friday, April 17, 2026, the 61-year-old filmmaker was sentenced by the Paris Court of Appeal to five years in prison, including two suspended, to be served under electronic monitoring for sexual assaults committed on the actress when she was aged 12 to 14 years. In an interview on ‘C dans l’air’ on Saturday, April 25, the actress reacted to this decision, alongside her lawyer Anouck Michelin, who has been with her for six years. “For me, it’s a relief,” said Adèle Haenel. “It’s the end of a long and challenging legal journey. I feel relief.” Adèle Haenel can finally put an end to this legal chapter. “It’s a chapter that closes. It’s good to have the terms set in legal terms,” she continued. “The legal process is also work. It’s also a lot of time spent examining the file, preparing for hearings. So all that time, now I will dedicate it to something else.” Now, the 37-year-old actress wants to contribute to a society where “all lives are livable.”
Adèle Haenel definitively breaks ties with cinema During this interview, Adèle Haenel, who had announced in May 2023 that she would stop her film career after four years of absence, spoke about her professional future, definitively closing the door to the film industry. “I do theater, that’s what I do. I do not criticize the medium, but the industry. It constructs imaginaries that do not help us to get out of the crisis we are in. For me, the stories it offers remain problematic. I do not want to participate in a world that normalizes cruelty, racism, sexism in image production. That’s what I criticize.”
The Christophe Ruggia case exploded in 2019 when Adèle Haenel accused the director of touching and sexual harassment when she was a minor. Her revelations, published by ‘Mediapart’, caused a shock in French cinema and reignited the debate on sexual violence in the cultural sector, following the #MeToo movement. The actress also criticized the inaction of the sector and the justice system, denouncing a system that protects aggressors. In 2020, she made a mark by leaving the César ceremony to protest against the award given to Roman Polanski, accused of rape. This case has become a major symbol of the liberation of speech in France and the tensions between artistic creation and moral responsibility.
/2026/04/28/69f0ef4d1c0c3061683412.jpg "Megarama accuses small cinemas of distorting competition and asks distributors to limit their access to films.")
