Adèle Haenel breaks her silence ten days after the end of the trial of Christophe Ruggia. 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 years suspended, to be served under electronic monitoring for sexual assaults committed on the actress when she was aged 12 to 14. In an interview given to “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 judicial journey. I feel relief.” Adèle Haenel can finally turn this judicial page. “It’s a chapter that’s closing. It’s good to have the terms set in legal language,” she continued. “The judicial journey is also a job. It also involves a lot of time examining the case, preparing for hearings. So all this time, I will dedicate it to something else.” Now, the 37-year-old actress wishes to contribute to a society where “all lives are livable.”
Adèle Haenel definitively breaks ties with cinema During this interview, Adèle Haenel, who announced in May 2023 that she would stop her career in cinema after four years of absence, spoke about her professional future, definitively closing the door on the seventh art. “I do theatre, that’s what I do. I don’t criticize the medium, but the industry. They build images that don’t help us get out of the crisis we are in. For me, the stories they offer remain problematic. I don’t 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 industry and justice, denouncing a system that protects the perpetrators. In 2020, she made a statement 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 freedom of speech in France and the tensions between artistic creation and moral responsibility.
