Protesters disrupted the first screening in France of Roman Polanski’s latest film on Tuesday, after the publication of a new rape accusation against the French-Polish director, reports The Guardian.
A group of about 40 activists blocked the screening of the French premiere of Polanski’s J’accuse (English title, An Officer and a Spy) at a cinema in Rue Champollion, although the film was screened elsewhere in Paris.
“The cancellation of this screening is not a victory. Victory will be when the impunity for rapists ends,” Chloé Madesta, one of the activists, told France Info radio.
Polanski is launching his new film in France just days after the French actress Valentine Monnier, in an open letter to the daily paper Le Parisien, accused Polanski, now 86, of having raped her in 1975, when she was 18-years-old, during a ski holiday in Gstaad, Switzerland. Polanski has denied the accusation.
Monnier is one of several women who have publicly accused Polanski of sexual assault them. Polanski has repeatedly denied all accusations against him.
Accusations against Polanski predate the Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal in 2017, but Polanski’s history came under renewed scrutiny as the #MeToo movement against sexual abuse and harassment grew in the wake of the Weinstein allegations.
Polanski fled the United States in 1978 after pleading guilty in 1977 to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles.
In October 2017, protesters disrupted the opening of a retrospective of Polanski’s work in Paris after new rape accusations against the director.
Last year, Polanski was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.