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 Appeals to five years in prison, including two suspended, to be served under electronic surveillance for sexual assaults committed on the actress when she was aged 12 to 14. In an interview on the show “C dans l’air” on Saturday, April 25, the actress reacted to this decision with 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 close this legal chapter. “It’s a chapter that is closing. It’s good to have the terms set, in legal terms,” she continued. “The legal journey is also work. It’s also a lot of time spent reviewing the case, preparing for hearings. So all this time, now I will devote it to something else.” The 37-year-old actress now wants to contribute to a society where “all lives are livable.”
Adèle Haenel definitively breaks ties with cinema. In this interview, Adèle Haenel, who had announced in May 2023 that she would end her film career after four years of absence, spoke about her professional future, definitively closing the door on the film industry. “I do theater, that’s what I do. I don’t criticize the medium, but the industry. Who constructs imaginaries that don’t help us get out of the crisis we are in. For me, the narratives it offers 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 erupted in 2019 when Adèle Haenel accused the director of groping 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 the justice system, denouncing a system that protects abusers. In 2020, she made a statement by leaving the César Awards ceremony to protest against the award given to Roman Polanski, who was 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.
