French women’s groups have called for a boycott of the César awards, the country’s equivalent of the Oscars, after Roman Polanski was asked to preside over this year’s ceremony.

The veteran film director, who has won four best director Césars for movies including Tess, The Pianist and The Ghost Writer, is wanted in the US on charges of raping a 13-year-old girl in Los Angeles in 1977.

The Académie des Arts et Techniques du Cinéma, which organises the annual event in Paris, announced on Thursday that Polanski, 83, would succeed the double Oscar winner Claude Lelouch in the largely honorary role.

“Artist, film-maker, producer, screenwriter, actor, director – there are many words to define Roman Polanski,” the Académie said. “But there is only one to express our admiration and enchantment: thank you, Mr President.”

Feminist groups greeted the announcement with outrage. “We are extremely angry,” said Claire Serre-Combe of Osez le Féminisme (Dare Feminism), which described the Académie’s decision as “shameful”.

Polanski, who won an Oscar for The Pianist and nominations for Tess, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby, was the author of “an unpunished crime of sexual violence” and “protected by his status as a celebrity”, the groups said, calling for people to protest outside the ceremony at the Châtelet theatre in Paris on 4 February.

“We cannot let this pass,” Serre-Combe told Agence France-Presse. “Making Polanski president is a snub to rape and sexual assault victims. The quality of his work counts for nothing when confronted with the crime he committed, his escape from justice and his refusal to face up to his responsibilities.”

Anne-Cécile Mailfert (@AnneCMailfert) This is no joke. This is France and we are in 2017 and #polanski will be President of the #cesar2017. Please rt and call for #BoycottCesar https://t.co/YIi8i7UEaP

The supreme court in Poland, the country where Polanski grew up, last month rejected a US request for his extradition if he entered the country, upholding a lower court ruling that he had already served a prison term and would not get a fair trial in the US.

The film-maker was arrested in Switzerland, where he owns a house, in 2009 on an earlier US extradition request, and spent 10 months under house arrest before the Swiss courts decided against the US order.

He pleaded guilty in 1977 to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, or statutory rape. The director, who was 43 at the time, was accused of drugging the girl before raping her during a photo shoot in Los Angeles.

As part of a plea bargain, Polanski underwent psychiatric evaluation and served 42 days in prison. But in 1978 he became convinced a judge was going to quash the deal and hand him a hefty prison sentence, and fled to France where he now lives.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aurélie Filippetti, the former French culture minister. Photograph: AFP/Getty

Aurélie Filippetti, the former French culture minister, defended the Franco-Polish film-maker as a “great director … who should be allowed to preside over this ceremony”.



Filippetti told Franco Info radio: “It’s something that happened 40 years ago. One cannot bring up this affair every time we talk about him because there was a problem back then. It is just an awards ceremony.”

Alain Rocca, one of the six-member committee that chooses the president for the awards, said the protests and boycott calls were an attempt to “sully an institution, and a man like Polanski”. Everyone was pushing their own version of events on social media, he told Le Monde.



But France’s minister for women’s rights, Laurence Rossignol, told French radio it was “shocking and surprising” that the rape accusation had not weighed in the committee’s decision.

“I’m afraid this only reveals, on the part of those who appointed him, a form of indifference towards something that remains very serious today, and that we are, incidentally, still fighting,” Rossignol told France Culture.

Shirley Kohn, an actor and producer, told Le Monde that even if the full details of the case were not known, “it’s as if we were not taking this accusation of rape seriously. Are actors and cinema professionals ready to receive prizes from Polanski?”

The film thought likely to win the most Césars is Elle, about a rape victim who seeks revenge on her attacker. It won best foreign film at the Golden Globes this month and best actress for its star, Isabelle Huppert.