Several women have stormed out of this year’s Cesar Awards in protest after filmmaker and sex offender Roman Polanski’s won the Best Director category.
In case you weren’t already aware, French-Polish director Roman Polanski is currently wanted in the US for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977, to which he pleaded guilty. Polanski has been a fugitive since 1978, when he fled the country while awaiting sentencing for his sexual abuse case. As a French citizen, he has been protected from extradition, and because he fled before the final verdict, the charges are still technically “pending.”
Despite his criminal history, his film An Officer And A Spy still managed to take out a number of awards at the ceremony, including Polanski’s own win in the Best Director category.
The Cesar Awards, commonly referred to as the “French Oscars”, took place in Paris on Friday despite intense scrutiny after Polanski’s nomination. The backlash was so intense that the entire board was forced to resign earlier this month following Polanski’s inclusion in the nominations.
French actress Adele Haenel, who recently shared her own sexual assault story at the hands of another French director when she was just 15, was the first to leave the room in protest of Polanski’s win.
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“Distinguishing Polanski is spitting in the face of all victims. It means raping women isn’t that bad,” Haenel told the New York Times prior to his win earlier this week.
French screenwriter and director Celine Sciamma, who dated Haenel until 2018, also walked out of the ceremony in protest of Polanski’s win.
Polanski and the rest of the cast and crew chose not to attend the ceremony in Paris on Friday, with the disgraced director saying he was skipping the event in fear of being “lynched.”
An Officer And A Spy picked up two other awards for best costume design and best adaptation, but nobody from the cast or crew was there to accept the award.
Hundreds of protesters took to the streets following the ceremony to condemn the win.
“By supporting the aggressors, by celebrating the aggressors, one does not allow the victims to speak out. Their word is denied,” Celine Piques of women’s activist group Osez le Feminisme said, according to Al Jazeera.
