Polanski documentary to be screened at Cannes

Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir, is based on interviews made with the director while he was under house arrest in Gstaad, Switzerland, in 2009 and 2010.

The documentary, made by French film-maker Laurant Bouzereau, contains Polanski's first public apology for having unlawful sex with a minor, the 1977 incident that prompted the director to flee America.

Polanski flew to France before being sentenced for the crime, ultimately leading to his arrest in Switzerland forty years later.

“She is a double victim: my victim and a victim of the press,” the director says in the film.

In spite of later being freed by Swiss authorities owing to errors in America's extradition request, Polanski is still wanted in the US.

In the documentary, Polanski talks about his childhood in the wartime Jewish Ghetto created in Krakow by the occupying German authorities.

The director also provides insights into the 1969 Manson Murders, which saw the slaying of his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate in the couple's Hollywood home, along with several friends.

Besides the documentary, the festival will be showing Tess, Polanski's 1979 adaptation of Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, with the director himself due to attend the screning.

Polanski has himself won the top award at Cannes - the Palme d'Or - for his 2002 Holocaust drama The Pianist.

The festival begins on 16 May. (nh)