After Roman Polanski was again charged with sex crime (actress Valentin Monnier stated that the director raped her at a ski resort in 1975), his last work, the historical drama “Officer and Spy,” ran into a number of difficulties. On November 16, activists foiled the screening at the Brittany National Theater, and then called for a boycott of its distribution across the country. Despite this, “Officer and Spy” became the leader of the French box office (half a million tickets were sold in the first week) – anti-advertising was, as often happens, the best advertisement.
However, activists do not abandon attempts to exclude 86-year-old Polanski from the film process. At the end of November, students of the Lodz Film School, which the director graduated in 1959, organized a protest demonstration and launched an online petition calling for a boycott of Polanski’s visit, who arrived in Lodz to receive an honorary award and present the “Officer and Spy”.
Rosanna Arquette calls for Roman Polansky to be removed from EFA nominees
And now the star of After Work and The Blue Abyss, Rosanna Arquette, and several other filmmakers are calling on the European Film Academy to remove the Officer and Spy from the list of EFA nominees. Recall that the picture is presented in four main categories – “Best European Film of the Year”, “Best Director”, “Best Screenplay” (Roman Polanski, Robert Harris) and “Best Actor” (Jean Dujardin). Also in the technical nominations the camera work of Pavel Edelman was noted.
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Meanwhile, the film, the artistic merits of which are obvious and have already been noted (in September, he received the Grand Prix of the jury of the Venice International Film Festival), became one of the favorites of another award – “Lumiere” (this is the French analogue of the Golden Globe). “Officer and Spy” received five nominations – he appears in the categories “Best Film”, “Best Director”, “Best Actor”, “Best Screenplay” and “Best Cinematography”.
In November of this year, French actress Valentin Monnier accused Polanski of brutal rape. According to Monnier, in 1975 (she was then 18 years old) after a ski trip, the director began to pester her in his chalet, and having met with resolute resistance, beat and raped her. Polanski denies his guilt. Monnier was also outraged that the director identifies himself with the protagonist of his last film – an officer of the French General Staff Alfred Dreyfus, who at the end of the 19th century was unfairly accused of spying for Germany in the wake of anti-Semitic sentiments.
