Released in mid-November 2019, the film I accused from Roman Polanski was welcomed by a controversy around its director who continued until the César 2020 evening.
I accuse is a film by novel Polanski released in 2019. Adaptation of the novel D by Robert Harris who traces the Dreyfus affair, the feature film was awarded three César in 2020 (best achievement, best costumes, best adaptation), but did not escape controversy. She crystallized at the time of the coronation of Roman Polanski aux César, leading to the famous outing of Adèle Haenel who left the room by screaming “It is shame!”
But let’s go back: why I accuse Did he do it at this controversial point? It is not so much the film that is controversial as its director. The latter was arrested and charged in March 1977 for sexual abuse on minor concerning Samantha Gailey, then 13 years old. Roman Polanski pleads guilty for illegal sex with a minor (which allows her to obtain the abandonment of five other charges, especially those of rape on a minor) and is sentenced to 90 days in prison before being released for exemplary driving, 42 days after imprisonment. The judge then decides to continue him again on the other accusations then abandoned. The director then flees the United States to settle in France, then in Switzerland a few years later.
If Samantha Gailey publicly forgiven him and asked for prosecution against Roman Polanski, which American justice has refused. Since then, other women have denounced sexual abuse in the press that would have been committed by the director when they were minor, especially in 2017, two years before the release of I accuse. On the other hand, few of his accusers filed a complaint. When there was a complaint, they have never succeeded. Other accusers never filed a complaint following their accusations. With the exception of the Samantha Gailey affair, Polanski novel has therefore never been prosecuted or judged for the other charges he was the subject of, and has always denied them.
A parallel with Dreyfus who does not pass
It is in this context that the release of I accuse Take place, in 2019. In the first press kit published on the occasion of the selection of the feature film at the Venice Mostra, Roman Polanski does not hesitate to parallel with his own story (he is accused of sexual violence by several women) and that of Captain Dreyfus: “I must say that I know a good number of mechanisms of persecution that are at work in this film and then stressing “aberrant stories of women [qu’il n’a] never seen from [sa] life and who [l]’Accused of things that would have taken place more than half a century ago. “In October, Roman Polanski denied having compared his situation with that of Dreyfus, and this mention disappears from the new version of the press kit provided to journalists, then mentions Le Figaro.
Demonstrations and new accusation
On the sidelines of the exit of I accuse In November 2019, Roman Polanski was the subject of new accusations of sexual violence, especially from photographer Valentine Monnier: she accused the director of having raped her in 1975 when she was 18 years old. However, she says she did not file a complaint due to the prescription. The filmmaker disputes the facts, and denies all the accusations he is the subject of: “I obviously have no memory of what she says, since it is false. I deny it absolutely”. In this context, the release of the film I accuse is heated. Projections are disrupted by demonstrations of feminist activists.
During the César evening, which takes place a few months later, the film team decided not to be present at the evening. The film will still be rewarded, and the evening will end with the release of Adèle Haenel. The one who had already denounced sexual violence that she would have suffered as a child by Christophe Ruggia had explained her point of view a few days earlier at the microphone of the New York Times: “To distinguish Polanski is to spit in the face of all the victims. It means: ‘It is not so serious to rape women.'”
Synopsis – At the end of 1894, Captain Dreyfus was sentenced to perpetuity on the Ile du Diable for having allegedly delivered French secret documents to the German Empire. The soldier is Jewish and becomes the scapegoat in an anti-Semitic France. Colonel Picquart, former Dreyfus professor who became a lieutenant-colonel and head of the military intelligence service, conducts his investigation when he discovers that Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly sentenced. He discovers that many members of the French administration prefer lying …