MeToo, the Holocaust and cults: Roman Polanski turns 90 with a new movie in Venice

French-Polish filmmaker, born 18 August 1933 in Paris. You are not traveling to countries where you are at risk of being extraditedhe shot this last movie in a town in Switzerland. gstaad To narrate the 1999 New Year’s Eve at a luxury hotel in the Alps, where the destinies of customers and employees intersect—his place of residence.

Hearing your name with others equally tainted with serious accusations of a sexual nature, e.g. Woody Allen or Luc Besson to take pride in his place on the Lido sparked a new wave of anger associated with his name.

“I don’t understand where the problem is. Polanski’s situation is paradoxical. It’s been 60 years. Polanski accepted his responsibility. He apologized. Pardoned by the victim. “The victim asked for an end to the matter,” Alberto Barbera, artistic director of the Venice Festival, told Variety magazine in July.

Barbera’s words The serious accusation that has hung over Polanski since 1977Samantha Geimer was raped when she was 13 and she was 43 after a photo shoot.

Person in charge Masterpieces like “Chinatown” (1974) or “The Devil’s Seed” (1968) He initially denied the facts and then admitted to having affairs with the minor, but soon escaped the United States, avoiding a possible decades-long prison sentence.

took refuge in Europe and he never set foot in the United States again, even when he won the Best Director Oscar for ‘The Pianist’ in 2003; ).

#MeToo, genocide and sects

With renewed momentum in the age of movement #Me tooThe accusation of evading punishment persecuted Polanski, but in recent years other women have also raised their voices to condemn the alleged abuses by the director.

This was the setting tonic. his last movie to date is ‘J’accuse’, also presented in Venice in 2019 without going in person to avoid being returned.

His tour of the rooms ended with a song. sour César Award ceremony The protests, for which he won the best director award – the Oscars of French cinema – are sowing.

Thereafter, the Academia de los César adopted the rule of not highlighting those accused of violent acts, and Polanski saw many more closed doors in France for your next project.

The life of Polanski, the son of a Polish-Jewish record salesman, who returned to Krakow with his family at the age of three, was mixed. great successes, great scandals and great tragedies.

His family suffered firsthand Nazi Persecution, who took the life of his mother, who was pregnant when her father was killed in a gas chamber while surviving for several years in Mauthausen.

He started his career behind the camera in 1955 and in the sixties the doors of Hollywood opened for him, where he shot the movie ‘The Vampire Ball’. -where he met actress Sharon Tate- or “Rosemary’s Baby” (“Devil’s seed”).

And another of the brutal tragedies that left its mark on his life happened to him in the Mecca of American cinema.

In 1969, when Tate was already eight and a half months pregnant with his wife, he became his victim along with four others. A brutal murder by members of the cult led by Charles Mansonin the house they live in.

Moreover, the filmmaker was considered a suspect by the press of the time, which gave the issue a tabloid air with accusations of witchcraft.

He re-established his life with the French actress later in Europe. Emmanuelle Seigner, her muse and ‘La venus de las pieles’ (2013) with which she has two children.

In this 2023, at the age of ninety, Polanski will once again be a key figure in the unresolved controversy. distinction between work and author.