Filmmaker Roman Polanski was arrested on rape charges dating from the 1970s, the Zurich Film Festival announced Sunday.
The Academy Award-winning director pleaded guilty in 1977 to having sex with a 13-year-old girl in the United States.
He has lived in France for decades to avoid being arrested if he enters the U.S. He declined to collect his Academy Award for Best Director in person when he won it for “The Pianist” in 2003.
He was en route to the Zurich Film Festival, which is holding a tribute to him, when he was arrested by Swiss authorities, the festival said.
Polanski was nominated for best director Oscars for “Tess” and “Chinatown,” and for best writing for “Rosemary’s Baby,” which he also directed.
Why did the swiss auhorities arrest him ? I mean, France didn’t cause it’s only a business with the USA. Or maybe French authorities should have arrest him, I don’t know but that’s weird that years after the trial, he’s been now arrested and not by americans. They could get to France to get him, they didn’t. So that’s weird that now Swiss takes part of the whole story. What’s their interests ?
Here’s a little more info
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/sep/27/roman-polanski-switzerland-custody
“There was a valid arrest request and we knew when he was coming,” Guido Balmer, a justice ministry spokesman, said. “That is why he was taken into custody.”
Balmer said the US would now be given time to make a formal extradition request. Polanski can contest his detention and extradition in the Swiss courts, and would not be sent to the US until proceedings were complete.
The French culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, said he was “dumbfounded” by Polanski’s arrest, adding that he “strongly regrets that a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already experienced so many of them”.
Mitterrand said he was in contact with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, “who is following the case with great attention and shares the minister’s hope that the situation can be quickly resolved”.
In a statement, the Zurich film festival organisers said they had “learned of [Polanski’s] arrest with great dismay and sadness”, but stressed that they would go ahead with a planned retrospective of his work and present the award on another date.
The Swiss Directors’ Association sharply criticised the authorities over what it described as “not only a grotesque farce of justice, but also an immense cultural scandal”.
The whole case is weird anyway. He shouldn’t have got protection in France in the 1970s only cause he’s a famous director. He admitted himself to have been with that teenage girl. And now, since the case isn’t over and the USA pretended to let the case open and not ask an arrest request when he was in France, any other country taking part of the process so late is acting weird to me. The USA has to take this case in charge, it shouldn’t foreign authorities that do their job, just cause it’s the f_______ USA and that everybody does them favors.
So the big question is, what is going to happen to his movie coming out?
Also how long will he be in the slammer?
It’s because France has no extradition policy with the U.S. and along with every other country except Canada. Canada is the only country in the world that will extradite someone to the U.S. if they have an arrest warrant. So it’s not a “fuck the U.S.” thing. It’s more like a “the law says he’s fine where he is so that’s where he’ll stay”. The same would go for any Joe Rapeagirl who leaves the U.S.
You should really get your facts straight, Lili
So one would think he will get a LONGER sentence due to him, oh, running for 30+ years, while winning an oscar and making movies?
so much for switzerland being neutral! …no more “theres roman polanski” jokes when im in central europe.
Sad sad day for cinema, but don’t know 100% what all happened. Just know he has had a weird life.
Actually I don’t really get any obsession or interest in such things. But I still know some facts, from personal experience, the USA has already negotiated to get some international prisoners or people are supposed to be under arrest, with France. And if that no extradition policy with the USA is true, it has been broken several times. Especially when it comes to terrorists. So again if the USA really wanted Polanski, they could have negotiated. All I’m saying it that, cause he’s famous (and I love lots of his movies as a director), he got some privileges that others haven’t.
Maybe the France did not extract him because he has the French citizenship, I guess.
That would sound more coherent.
Terrorists are a different story. They’re the new Communists and if you don’t give them up then you look like a fucking terrorist yourself. A 40 year old statutory rape case? Not the same as Terrorism, Lili. In the eyes of the law anyway. We’re talking about a girl whose mother pushed her into Hollywood circles and told her to tell anyone who asked that she was 18. She wanted money and Roman Polanski was the poor guy who got stuck. The Swiss shouldn’t have done this. They can sit out of World Wars and mass genocide but when it comes to arrested elderly men in airports? Well, COME ON DOWWWWWWWWWWN, SWITZERLAND! YOU BIG BRAVE SOANDSOS!
Film mogul Harvey Weinstein has got behind a campaign by French film-makers calling on US authorities not to extradite the Oscar-winning Polish director in connection with a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor dating back more than three decades.
Weinstein entered the fray at the personal behest of Cannes film festival director Thierry Fremaux and will now use his considerable influence and campaigning heft to enlist the support of Hollywood.
“We’re calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation,” Weinstein said, reviving a theme he adopted earlier in the year after he bought international distribution rights at Sundance to the HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i23c3f1198e87267cff3d675745dfb136
Film and political heavyweights – from Harvey Weinstein and Cannes Festival head Thierry Fremaux to the foreign ministers of France and Poland – have expressed outrage at Polanski’s arrest, which happened Saturday as he arrived in Switzerland to attend the Zurich Film Festival.
…
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called the arrest “a bit sinister” and, together with his Polish counterpart Radoslaw Sikorski has written to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, asking her to intervene. The Polish Filmmakers Assn. also called for the release of Polanski, and has asked U.S. authorities to review the case.
The Zurich Film Festival jury donned red badges reading “Free Polanski” at a news conference Monday and accused Switzerland of “philistine collusion” in arresting Polanski.
“We hope today this latest order will be dropped. It is based on a three-decade-old case that is all but dead but for minor technicalities,” said jury president Debra Winger. “We stand by and wait for his release and his next masterwork.”
Cannes Film Festival president Gilles Jacob, Italian star Monica Bellucci and directors Costa-Gavras, Wong Kar Wai and Bertrand Tavernier are among the signatures on a petition demanding Polanski’s immediate release.
Harvey Weinstein has also lent his support to the cause after being approached by Cannes director Thierry Fremaux. It’s expected the Weinstein Co. boss will head up a Hollywood lobby fighting the extradition.
The last few days have been hectic… resulting in this