Full board of France's Cesar film awards steps down amid Roman Polanski controversy

The entire leadership of the Cesar Awards, France's version of the Oscars, has stepped down in a spat over both its opaque decision-making process and controversial director Roman Polanski , whose new film leads this year's nominations. The decision by the academy's influential board to resign en masse came Thursday evening, just two weeks before the 2020 award ceremony on Friday, February 28. Multiple nominations for Polanski's An Officer and a Spy triggered calls by feminist groups for a boycott of the awards as an expression of outrage against the ceremony and the director. He was accused of sexual assault by a French woman just three months ago, allegations he denies. Nominating Polanski's movie in 12 categories this year represented a last straw for the already-roiled academy board, who had expressed frustration over the closed nature of the age-old award's decision-making structure. “To honour the men and women who made cinema happen in 2019, to find calm and ensure that the festival of film remains just that, a festival, the board ... has decided to resign unanimously," the academy said in a statement. "This collective decision will allow complete renewal,” it added. The unprecedented walk out comes just days after hundreds of French cinema figures published an open letter in newspaper Le Monde , branding the Cesar Academy "a vestige of an era that we would like to be over." They claimed in the letter to have "no voice" in how the "elitist and closed system" operates. “Why can’t the 4,700 members of the academy vote to elect their representatives, as is the case at the Oscars, BAFTAs and European Academy of Cinema?” the signatories said. The academy pledged to "modernise" the awards, and make the voting body – which is 65 per cent male – more diverse. Polanski has been a fugitive from the US for more than four decades after pleading guilty in 1977 to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl. He fled the US in 1978. But in November, French daily Le Parisien reported claims from a French woman that she was assaulted at age 18 in 1975 by Polanski at his chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland.

Full board of France's Cesar film awards steps down amid Roman Polanski controversy

Polanski's 'An Officer and a Spy' has been nominated for 12 awards at the 2020 ceremony