Roman Polanski’s “J’accuse” will compete at this year’s Venice Film Festival, the organizers said in a statement on Thursday .

Polanski, the French-born filmmaker who won the Oscar for best director in 2003 for “The Pianist,” has been a fugitive from the United States since 1978, after he fled the country while awaiting sentencing for the statutory rape of an underage girl.

Last year, he was expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, not long after it changed its rules to say there was “no place in the academy for people who abuse their status, power or influence in a manner that violates recognized standards of decency.”

But there is still a place for Polanski at Venice, where he has a long history. In 2011, he did not attend the premiere of his film “Carnage” there because of attempts to extradite him to the United States.