"A Tribute to ..." Roman Polanski

Directing Icon Roman Polanski: Honoured at the 5th Zurich Film Festival with the “A Tribute to...” Award for his Life’s Work as a Director

Statement from the Zurich Film Festival regarding the arrest of Roman Polanski

The organisers of the Zurich Film Festival are taken aback; they regret the circumstances regarding the arrest of Roman Polanski and protest against these. Roman Polanski was in Zurich to be celebrated as guest of honour for his cinematic work, which has received undisputed recognition worldwide amongst experts. The assessment of legal aspects does not lie within the responsibility of the organisers of the Zurich Film Festival.

Accusations which have not been thoroughly legally checked are decisively rejected by the Zurich Film Festival. Since it is not possible to make any enquiries regarding arrest warrants for legal reasons, the Zurich Film Festival has not made contact with any of the judicial authorities - assertions to the contrary are false. For this reason, Mr Polanski's management also knew nothing about them. Apart from that, Mr Polanski has been visiting Switzerland regularly and unchallenged for years, including during the course of this year. There were no grounds to assume any change in the situation.

The Zurich Film Festival sticks to its recognition of Mr Polanski's cultural achievements. Everything else lies in the responsibility of the justice authorities. The publicity surrounding Mr Polanski's arrest has not been sought after by the organisers of the Film Festival. We intended to honour Roman Polanski for his cinematic achievements. We hope that the scandal surrounding the arrest of Mr Polanski will not cause the films of many talented artists to be forgotten, but rather that they receive the attention they deserve.

The Zurich Film Festival, which made the prominent filmmaker to a topic with its 2008 Documentary Film Competition series screening of Marina Zenovich’s film Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, has presented a Polanski retrospective on September 27 and screened films from his oeuvre such as his cinema debut Knife in the Water and classics like the thriller Chinatown and the Holocaust drama The Pianist, for which he received the Oscar® for Best Director.

Born 1933 in Paris to Polish parents, the director Roman Polanski celebrated his exhilarating cinema debut with the psycho-drama Knife in the Water (1962), for which he also wrote the screenplay. His premiere work received the FIPRESCI Prize in the same year, followed by an Oscar® Nomination for the best foreign language film in 1964. Polanski’s most famous works include the comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), The Oscar®-winning and soon to become cult film psycho-thriller Rosemary`s Baby (1968) and the detective-thriller lead by Jack Nicholson Chinatown (1974), decorated with an Oscar®, nominated for many more and regarded as a milestone in the tradition of Film Noir. Polanski’s mystery thriller The Ninth Gate with Johnny Depp was released in 1999. His semi-biographic Holocaust drama The Pianist did not only triumph with the Golden Palm at Cannes in 2002 but received the Oscar® for Best Director in 2003. The film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic novel Oliver Twist followed in 2005. Polanski received the European Film Academy’s European Film Prize for his life’s work in 2006. The mystery thriller The Ghost with Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Timothy Hutton, Kim Cattrall and Tom Wilkinson in the leading roles is set to hit cinema screens in 2010. The film tells of a ghostwriter commissioned to pen the memoirs of a former British prime minister and thereby reveal secrets that bring his own life into great danger.

Polanski’s childhood was tragic. His mother died in Auschwitz while he survived the dramatic escape from the Krakow Ghetto concealed in the countryside by Catholic smallholders. Polanski was crazy about cinema from an early age. He began acting in the early 50s and studied at the renowned film school in Lodz (graduated in 1959), where his short films – characterized by black humour and an interest for bizarre relationships – provided, to some extent, the direction for his later films. Following his success as a director with Knife in the Water, Polanski left Poland in 1963. After a short stay in England he made the move to Hollywood, where, in the same year, he made his breakthrough with the highly successful and seminal psycho-thriller Rosemary`s Baby. Shortly after its premiere in 1969, a severe stroke of fate led to the brutal murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate in Los Angeles by followers of the occult Manson sect. Polanski left the USA and returned to Europe. He began filming again in Europe and Hollywood in 1973. In order to avoid a threatening lawsuit, the filmmaker left the USA and headed back to Paris in 1978. Polanski acquired French citizenship in 1975. He has been married to the French actress Emmanuelle Seigner since 1989 and lives today in Paris.