Roman Polanski won best director for An Officer and a Spy at a fractious ceremony for the Cesars that ended in walkouts and recrimination in Paris yesterday.
The entire French academy had been forced to resign earlier this month amid fury that the veteran — wanted in the US for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1977 — had topped the list of nominations.
Protesters chanting “Lock up Polanski” tried to storm the theater where the ceremony was being held before being pushed back by police firing tear gas.
French Minister of Culture Franck Riester had warned that giving the maker of Rosemary’s Baby a Cesar would be “symbolically bad given the stance we must take against sexual and sexist violence.”
However, Polanski won two awards — best adapted screenplay and best director — with the latter prompting Adele Haenel, who was nominated for best actress for Portrait of a Lady on Fire, to storm out, crying “Shame!”
Haenel has become a hero of the #MeToo movement in France after accusing the director of her first film, Christophe Ruggia, of sexually harassing her when she was only 12.
Polanski’s film also picked up best costume design.
“Distinguishing Polanski is spitting in the face of all victims,” Haenel had said in the run-up to the Cesars. “It means raping women isn’t that bad.”
Polanski, 86, and the entire team of his historical drama had boycotted the ceremony, fearing a “public lynching.”
The big winner of the night was the Oscar-nominated Les Miserables, set in one of France’s deprived and restive suburbs.
It took best film and three other prizes including the audience award.
Its Mali-born director Ladj Ly made an appeal for unity on a highly fraught night, saying “our enemy is not the other, but poverty.”
Papicha, a touching story of Algerian women fighting for their freedom by Mounia Meddour, also fared well, winning both best first film and best female newcomer for actress Lyna Khoudri.
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