Paris (AFP)
The 45th Cesar ceremony is held Friday night under high tension, against a background of expected reforms and strong protests against the 12 nominations of "J'accuse" by Roman Polanski, who announced that he would not go there.
The annual high mass of French cinema will start around 9:00 p.m., chaired this year by actress Sandrine Kiberlain, with humorist Florence Foresti as mistress of ceremony. She looks agitated.
Illustration of this explosive climate, it will be preceded at 6:00 p.m. by a rally at the call of feminist associations, including #NousToutes et Dare feminisme, to protest against the numerous nominations of "J'accuse".
This historic thriller on the Dreyfus Affair is indeed one of the main nominated works. Alongside him are notably Ladj Ly's film on the suburbs "Les Misérables" (also 12 nominations and big favorite for the César for best film) and "Portrait of the young girl on fire" by Céline Sciamma, who has ten.
A special place given to Roman Polanski, which feminists and a part of the public opinion consider unacceptable in the middle of the postMeToo era, when he has been targeted since November by a new accusation of rape.
The 86-year-old Franco-Polish director is also still being sued by the American justice system for illegal sexual relations with a minor in 1977.
- Two worlds -
The Minister of Culture Franck Riester estimated Friday on France Info that a César of best director for Roman Polanksi would be "a bad symbol compared to the necessary awareness that we must all have in the fight against sexual and gender-based violence ".
But he added that he had no problem with a César for best film, saying that "J'accuse" was the work of a "team" and that there was "no reason to penalize the collective ".
In this climate of tension, Roman Polanski announced that he would not attend the ceremony.
"For several days, I have been asked this question: will I come or will I not come to the César ceremony. The question I ask is rather the following: how could I?", Said the filmmaker in a text sent Thursday to AFP, saying that "activists are already threatening him with a public lynching".
The "Portrait of the young girl on fire" team, largely female, should be massively there, during this evening which should symbolically confront two worlds.
"This Caesar ceremony symbolizes the fracture of society. The confrontation between an old world crumbling in the face of men and women who want to think about representations", judges academic Iris Brey, specialist in genre in cinema, in an interview with L'Humanité.
The revival will be embodied in particular by Adèle Haenel, nominated for the César for best actress and become the icon of a new momentum of #MeToo in France since she accused director Christophe Ruggia in November of "repeated touching" when she was a teenager.
Showing the color, the one who had created an earthquake in French cinema in the fall with his testimony, said Monday in an interview with the New York Times that "to distinguish Polanski is to spit in the face of all the victims".
- A single sacred director -
At his side, the director Céline Sciamma, very involved in the collective 50/50 for the parity in the cinema, could create a moment of History also by winning the César for the best achievement.
It was won only once by a woman, Tonie Marshall for "Venus Beauty (Institute)", just twenty years ago.
This evening should also be that of the beginning of a renaissance for the institution of the Cesars, shaken in recent weeks by a serious operational crisis.
A wind of revolt, emanating from film personalities, had blown since mid-January to criticize the opacity, the lack of democracy, diversity and parity of the leadership of the Academy of Caesar.
This sling had led, in mid-February, to the resignation en bloc of its board of directors, chaired since 2003 by Alain Terzian.
An interim president of the Cesars, Margaret Menegoz, was already appointed on Wednesday, and an extraordinary general meeting will be held on April 20 to adopt new statutes.
"We have the right to our fair and we can claim that it corresponds to us", explains in Liberation the actress Marina Foïs, member of the collective 50/50 and active signatory of the forum of more than 400 film professionals who had precipitated the fall of the direction of the Caesars. "The way is violent? It is nonchalance that is for me," she said.
Meanwhile, a sign of unease, no Honorary Cesar, generally attributed to Hollywood stars, has been announced this year. According to Le Parisien, the American actor Brad Pitt would have given his agreement at first, before retracting.
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