Roman Polanski will celebrate his 90th birthday this Friday while premiering his latest film, Palace, at a non-competitive Venice festival. His career has carried both profound artistic success and enduring controversy, yet it continues to attract attention around the world, with doors not always opening as freely as his talent might suggest.
Polanski, a French-Polish filmmaker born in Paris on August 18, 1933, has lived a life marked by dramatic upheavals. He shot Palace in a Swiss town, using the Alpine setting to frame a narrative where the destinies of guests and staff intersect in a luxury hotel. The project remains a point of residence for the director and a subject of ongoing public discourse about his legacy.
The mere mention of Polanski alongside other figures accused of serious crimes has long provoked strong reactions. His presence at major festivals, including the Lido, has sparked renewed debates about accountability and artistic achievement in equal measure.
Animation master Hayao Miyazaki will open the San Sebastian Festival with his latest film.
Polanski’s supporters point to the passage of time and what they see as a complex moral reckoning. Alberto Barbera, the Venice festival’s artistic director, suggested the discussion around Polanski is layered: a long career, a sense of responsibility acknowledged, and, for some, a separation between artistic work and personal conduct. Barbera’s comments to Variety touched on the way the public has re-engaged with the case over decades, including the allegations that have shadowed Polanski since 1977 when the case involving Samantha Geimer, then a minor, became a defining moment in the public memory of the director.
Geimer’s experience, described in subsequent decades as a pivotal part of the discourse around Polanski, remains a reference point in many conversations about consent, power, and accountability in the film industry. The discussion has involved many voices, with supporters and critics weighing in on what justice looks like in a case that has stretched across generations.
Polanski is widely known for a body of celebrated work that includes Chinatown and The Devil’s Seed, and his life has intersected with dramatic personal upheavals. He initially denied certain allegations, then acknowledged relationships with a person who was underage at the time, and subsequently left the United States. He did not return to the country for decades, even after winning the Best Director Oscar for The Pianist in 2003. The trajectory demonstrates how a director’s artistry can coexist with severe personal and legal controversies.
The MeToo movement brought renewed scrutiny in recent years, as did broader conversations about accountability in the film industry. Polanski’s latest project, J’accuse, presented at Venice in 2019, did not require his physical presence to be part of the festival, underscoring ongoing debates about public appearances, accountability, and artistic credit.
Throughout his career, Polanski has faced a mix of acclaim and protest. Protests at award ceremonies and public events have highlighted concerns about violence and power, while some within the industry have defended the work as separate from the person. The evolving norms around such discussions have influenced how peers and audiences engage with his films and future projects.
The director’s early life tells a story of resilience and adversity. The son of a Polish-Jewish record seller, he and his family endured Nazi persecution during World War II. His mother perished in the Holocaust, and the family faced immense hardship before rebuilding their lives in Europe. Polanski began directing in the mid-1950s, gaining attention during the 1960s in Hollywood with films such as The Vampire Ball and Rosemary’s Baby. A later, brutal tragedy in the same era would leave a lasting imprint on his personal and professional world, including the Tate murders in 1969, which shocked the film community and the public alike.
The life arc of Polanski—marked by extraordinary artistic achievements, dramatic personal losses, and enduring controversy—continues to raise the broader question of how to balance an artist’s body of work with the ethics of their actions. In recent years, debates over the line between recognizing creativity and holding individuals accountable for acts of violence have remained at the center of discussions about his place in cinema, particularly as he remains a prominent, polarizing figure in international film circles. The conversation persists about whether the work can be viewed independently of the person, and how audiences should navigate that tension in evaluating a director’s filmography and future contributions.