Controversial film director Roman Polanski has rescinded his plan to preside over the Cesars ceremony—the French equivalent of the Oscars—after his nomination sparked furor among women’s groups, who threatened to disrupt the event, his lawyer said on Thursday.
“In order not to disturb the Cesars ceremonies, which should focus on the cinema and not on the appointment of the (event’s) president, Roman Polanski has decided not accept the invitation… and will not preside over the next Cesars ceremonies,” his lawyer Herve Temine said in a statement, adding that the controversy had “deeply saddened Roman Polanski and affected his family.”
News that the award-winning director had been offered the job prompted outrage from French feminist groups. He has been wanted in the US for nearly four decades on charges of raping of 13-year Samantha Gailey in Los Angeles in 1977.
The leading one, Osez le feminisme (Dare feminism), called the French Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques ‘s decision to honor him “shameful”.
“We cannot let this pass” the group’s spokeswoman Claire Serre-Combe told Agence France Press.
“Making Polanski president is a snub to rape and sexual assault victims. The quality of his work counts for nothing when confronted with the crime he committed, his escape from justice and his refusal to face up to his responsibilities,” she added.
A petition asking for his removal as president of the ceremony has garnered over 61,000 signatures.
Gailey had accused Polanski of drugging her and plying her with champagne before having sex with her.
The Franco-Polish filmmaker, 43 at the time, originally denied the charges but ended up pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse, or statutory rape as part of a plea bargain under which he served 42 days and underwent psychiatric evaluation.
But in 1978, convinced that a judge was preparing to condemn him to a much longer prison sentence, Polanski fled to France. He has never returned to America since.
In 2009, Polanski was arrested in Switzerland on a US extradition request and spent 10 months under house arrest before a Bern court rejected the US order. The US then asked Poland to extradite him in January 2015, but the demand was rejected in October of that year.
Backing French feminists, France’s minister for women’s rights, Laurence Rossignol, expressed surprise and shock at the fact that “a rape case counts for so little in the life of a man.”
The choice of Polanski showed “an indifference with regard to the acts of which he is accused” and “a sort of banalization of rape,” she said.
The French Academy of Cinema Arts, on the other hand, has previously praised Polanski as an “insatiable aesthete” and former French culture minister Aurelie Filippetti also defended him as a “great director… who should be allowed to preside over the ceremony.”
“It is something that happened 40 years ago. One cannot bring up this affair every time we talk about him because there was a problem back then,” she told French public radio.
Against this backdrop, the film most likely to score big at this year’s Cesars is “Elle” starring Isabelle Hupert, a thriller about a rape victim who tracks down her unknown assailant .
It won best foreign language film at this year’s Golden Globes Ceremony.
