In an unprecedented move, French film academy has seen a massive walk out over their awards nominations list. All 21 people on the board that runs the César Academy have announced that they’re quitting after the upcoming César Awards – the French version of The Oscars – on February 28th after Roman Polanski lead the nominations for the year.
Roman Polanski is known for making a couple of films that won awards, but his name is most commonly associated with the time he plead guilty to raping a 13 year old girl, Samantha Geimer. He plead guilty to the rape in order to avoid other charges like false imprisonment and seduction of a minor.
He fled from the USA and had an international arrest warrant put out against him, and is now accused by five women of assaulting them when they were underaged.
Somehow he’s still making movies, and in 2019 he directed a film called An Officer And A Spy. This film picked up 12 nominations in the César Awards, which is what lead to the entire Board resigning.
“To honour those who made films in 2019, to regain serenity and make the cinema festival a celebration, the board of directors of the [film academy] made a unanimous decision to resign,” the Board said in a statement.
For more about the future of the American Oscars, listen to the GOAT Team chat about what could come next…
I absolutely commend the decision from the César Academy Board, it’s really refreshing to see a strong stance against injustice. But then I think that it’s sad this feeling is so rare.
In the past week, we’ve seen Natalie Portman’s cape, embroidered with the names of all the female directors who were snubbed, divide opinions everywhere. Rose McGowan even called it “disgusting.”
It’s taken a long time for Harvey Weinstein to be charged, but we still see people like his lawyer say that sexual assault is about putting yourself “in that position.” It’s taken a long time for us to acknowledge the gender and race discrepancies in the Oscars nominations, but we’re still calling Natalie Portman’s cape attention seeking. It’s taken a long time to try and get Roman Polanski out of the spotlight, but he’s still leading the award nominations at a the French equivalent of the Oscars.
It’s taking a long time to get to where we need to be, but we can find comfort in the fact that at least we’re moving in the right direction.
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