France’s minister for women’s rights said it was a “shocking” decision to appoint filmmaker Roman Polanski as head of the jury for the country’s equivalent of the Oscars.<\/p>\n
The award-winning director has been wanted in the US for decades after admitting to sex with a minor.<\/p>\n
Mr Polanski, now 83, fled ahead of his sentencing for statutory rape in 1978.<\/p>\n
The Cesars have defended their choice, praising the director as an “insatiable aesthete”.<\/p>\n
His role in the 2017 awards has outraged women right’s groups, who have called for a boycott of next month’s televised ceremony.<\/p>\n
The minister, Laurence Rossignol, told France Culture radio she found it “surprising and shocking that a rape case counts for little in the life of a man”.<\/p>\n
‘An insult to women’<\/strong><\/p>\n However, a statement from the French Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques, which runs the Cesars, praised the director.<\/p>\n “Artist, filmmaker, producer, writer, actor, director, there are many words to define Roman Polanski but only one to express our admiration and enchantment: thank you, Mr President,” said the organisation’s head, Alain Terzian, according to French newspaper Le Monde.<\/p>\n Mr Polanski, best known for the films Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby and The Pianist, has French and Polish citizenship.<\/p>\n In December, Poland’s Supreme Court rejected a request by the nation’s justice minister to have Mr Polanski extradited to the US to face the charges.<\/p>\n His victim, Samantha Geimer, described the ordeal of giving testimony against Polanski, in an interview for the BBC’s Hardtalk programme in 2013.<\/p>\n The 42nd Cesars ceremony will take place in Paris on 24 February.<\/p>\n An online petition calling for him to be removed from the jury role had gathered just under 50,000 signatures on Friday.<\/p>\n “It is an insult to women and the suffering they can endure, an insult to victims of rape,” it read.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" France’s minister for women’s rights said it was a “shocking” decision to appoint filmmaker Roman Polanski as head of the jury for the country’s equivalent of the Oscars. The award-winning director has been wanted in the US for decades after admitting to sex with a minor. Mr Polanski, now 83, fled ahead of his sentencing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[3,3262],"class_list":["post-286832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-showbiz","tag-ghana-news","tag-roman-polanski"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=286832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=286832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=286832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=286832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}