Shooting Star

A message from Adèle Haenel - European Shooting Star.

I’ve been consuming my days with this girl. The Berlinale has started and because she’s one of this year’s Shooting Stars this week has become her week. So, would you mind if I would do nothing but post pictures of Adèle Haenel? Because that’s what I feel like doing.

This french girl would like to work with James Cameron, have a role in The Terminator. She saw Millenium and loved and would love to work with Rooney Mara. She dreams of being in a scene where she fights with a man and kicks his ass. And win. 

If you start with her first film, you can easily watch any other film with her (including L'apollonide, which is equally tough). In Les Diables she worked for nine months before filming and it clearly shows. Like Leonardo DiCaprio in Gilbert Grape, her authenticity gets disturbing. One of the most disturbing films about childhood I can think of.

There’s someone she has to thank for her film career, especially, and that is Céline Sciamma who wrote this mind blowing, penetrating and excruciating character Adèle played in Water Lilies. From the beginning of the film you get stoned, completely inside the story and these three teenage characters.

Then, between short films and films made for television, she has three films selected in Cannes 2011. One of them is L'Apollonide (Souvenirs de la maison close) and this is another tough one. Curiously, two of her cast mates are past Shooting Stars, Jasmine Trinca and Hafsia Herzi. This year she also got her secong Cesar Nomination for Promising Actress with L'apollonide (back in 2008 she lost for Hafsia Herzi). 
Confessions of a Child of the Century is one of her next projects coming out.

Once again, I must phrase the Jury’s Comment. I think it couldn’t be a better description than this one:

Coming from a country renowned for producing great screen actresses, Haenel still stands out as a true original. Whether playing tomboyish, spiky, fragile or misunderstood, she is always daring and hypnotic, vanishing into her characters with unabashed fearlessness.

From United Kingdom to Romania and Switzerland, these are this year's Shooting Stars. 

Carey Mulligan, Mélanie Laurent, David Kross, Anamaria Marinca and Andrea Riseborough were past Shooting Stars.

               John Hurt gave this award and shared some of his wise thoughts to the young actors.

I can say she's one of my favorite actresses of today, right in my top five (because I have usually three thousand actresses that I look for, that I'm interesting in and so the list gets pretty long). So it means a lot to be in my top five. It's one of those cases where the awards don't matter, the language doesn't matter and surely her looks is the least to say about her. She's often real, she's often courageous, and she's often breathtaking.