Amid protests, Polanski named best director at France's Oscars

LONDON • Roman Polanski, the film director who fled the United States in 1978 while awaiting sentencing for having sex with a 13-year-old, was a big winner on Friday night at the Cesars, France's equivalent of the Academy Awards, despite outrage over his nominations.

He was named best director for J'accuse (An Officer And A Spy), a movie about Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish military officer wrongly convicted of treason in what remains France's most notorious miscarriage of justice.

The film won two other awards, having led the nominations with 12, the most of any movie. Polanski was given the award for best adapted screenplay along with Robert Harris, the British novelist. The movie also won for best costume design. It was nominated for the best film award, but that honour went to Les Miserables, a crime drama that shows the harsh reality of life in Paris' immigrant-heavy suburbs.

"Very few" people applauded Polanski's best director award, said Le Monde, the French newspaper, and some stars walked out.

Polanski was not there to collect any of the prizes. He announced on Thursday that he would not attend the ceremony because he feared a "public lynching" from protesters outside, angered at his links to child sexual abuse.

"We know how this evening will unfold already," he said in a statement. "What place can there be in such deplorable conditions for a film about the defence of truth, the fight for justice, blind hate and anti-Semitism?"

Polanski pulled out of the 2017 awards for the same reason.

On Friday, French police fired tear gas outside the Paris concert hall hosting the Cesar Awards in a clash with people protesting against the director, according to local news reports. Protesters also pulled down a safety barrier outside the venue, but the police pushed them back and they did not make it onto the red carpet.

Other demonstrators waved placards reading "Shame on an industry that protects rapists".

After the Cesar nominations were announced in January, a host of French feminist organisations said they would protest against the ceremony. "If rape is an art, give Polanski all the Cesars," they said in an open letter published in a leading newspaper.

Adele Haenel, one of France's most prominent young actresses, who said she had suffered from sexual abuse in the country's film industry, also complained last month about Polanski's nominations.

"Distinguishing Polanski is spitting in the face of all victims," she told The New York Times. "It means raping women isn't that bad."

Haenel walked out of the room at the Cesar ceremony after Polanski won best director, waved an arm in disgust and appeared to say, "It's a shame."

NYTIMES