The initial shockwave caused by an investigation published this month by Mediapart revealing French actress Adèle Haenel’s accusations against filmmaker Christophe Ruggia of inappropriate “touching” and of “sexual harassment” of her over several years, beginning when she was aged 12, was heightened by her subsequent, emotionally charged live video interview with Mediapart, which is presented here below with English subtitles for the first time.
Ruggia, 54, has “categorically” denied inappropriate behaviour towards Haenel.
Mediapart’s investigation cited several accounts from people, including cinema professionals, which leant support to her claims. Haenel, 30, an acclaimed and award-winning actress who has to date starred in 23 films, including Water Lilies, House of Tolerance, Suzanne, Love at First Fight and The Lady on Fire, has received wide public backing from French cinema professionals and organisations, who have saluted her courage in deciding to speak out.
The Paris public prosecution services, acting on the revelations in Mediapart's report, have opened an investigation into suspected “sexual assault of a minor by a person of authority” and “sexual harassment”, while Ruggia is now the subject of a procedure of exclusion from the French film directors’ association, the SRF, which he until recently co-presided. While the SRF is to begin consultations on eradicating sexual harassment in the industry in the wake of the case of Adèle Haenel, French culture minister Frank Reister has announced separate measures to clamp down on sexual harassment in the industry and to offer support to victims.
The alleged events concern a period from 2001 to 2004, beginning when Haenel, then aged 12 and an unknown child actress, was chosen for one of the two principal roles (alongside co-star Vincent Rottiers) in Ruggia’s film The Devils, released in 2002, about the incestuous love between two runaway orphans. She said that over the period when she was aged between 12 and 15, she was subjected to a “hold” spun by Ruggia, which became “constant sexual harassment”, repeated “touching” of her thighs and body and “forced kisses on the neck”, which she said took place in the director's apartment where she was invited to watch films.
In the interview below, Haenel says the experience subsequently left her in a state of depression and anxiety, that she was not listened to by even those close to her who defended Ruggia as being “a nice man”, and caused her to renounce her dreams of a cinema career. She describes a long and painful path to recovery, and her eventual return to cinema with the 2007 film Water Lilies. Above all, she explains why she finally decided earlier this year to publicly speak out about the alleged events, in a move which she says she hopes will bring courage and hope to others who are victims of sexual abuse.
Haenel is joined for the interview by Mediapart publishing editor Edwy Plenel and by journalist Marine Turchi who led the seven-month investigation published by Mediapart earlier this month, and who recounts the background to its progression.
Click screen to play. If the subtitles do not immediately appear, click on the rectangle first from the left, after the timecode, to bring them up (a red bar will appear below this when the subtitles are activated).
Following the interview, French photographer and actress Valentine Monnier publicly alleged that French-Polish director Roman Polanski, charged in the US for the 1977 rape of (which under a plea bargain was reduced to unlawful intercourse with) a 13-year-old girl and already accused of sexual assault by others, raped her at his Swiss chalet in 1975 by when she was aged 18. Last month, before Monnier's accusation was made in public, Adèle Haenel took part in a debate at her behest at the Roche-sur-Yon international film festival in France, to accompany the preview there of Polanski’s latest film An Officer and a Spy, where she discussed the issue of sexual violence against women and whether the criminal actions of a man can be regarded in separation from his artistic activities.
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Subtitle translation by Graham Tearse, superimposition and video editing by Renaud Creus.