Roman Polanski cast a shadow over France\u2019s Cesar Awards on Friday even as he won best directing for his film \u201cAn Officer and a Spy,\u201d with several women in the audience walking out in protest at honouring a man facing rape accusations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The French-Polish director\u2019s dozen nominations had divided opinion in France, a country where the #MeToo movement that inspired women globally to out powerful men for sexual misconduct has struggled to gain traction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Polanski, 86, whose film also picked up awards for best adaptation and best costume designer, stayed away from the event, saying he feared he would be lynched.Controversy had swirled around the inclusion in the awards programme of Polanski, who fled the United States for France in the late 1970s after admitting raping a 13-year-old girl, and faces more recent allegations of sexual assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Polanski denies the latest accusations against him.During the ceremony, the biggest night on the French cinema calendar, Polanski served as both lightning rod and punch line, with the ceremony\u2019s host quipping about paedophilia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is the last of one era and the first of another,\u201d actress Sandrine Kiberlain said.Among those who left the venue early was leading actress Adele Haenel, who last year revealed she had been sexually abused as a child by another director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Protesters outside clashed with police shortly before the biggest names in French film arrived at the Pleynel concert hall, but none made it onto the red carpet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roman Polanski cast a shadow over France\u2019s Cesar Awards on Friday even as he won best directing for his film \u201cAn Officer and a Spy,\u201d with several women in the audience walking out in protest at honouring a man facing rape accusations. The French-Polish director\u2019s dozen nominations had divided opinion in France, a country where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80972,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80970\/revisions\/80972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}