Filmmaker Roman Polanski is skipping the awards ceremony for France's equivalent of the Oscars where his latest movie leads this year's nominations because of protests prompted by a new rape accusation against him.
Women's rights activists have called for a boycott of Friday's Cesars ceremony in Paris, and plastered anti-Polanski banners and graffiti at the event venue and the Cesar academy headquarters.
The entire male-dominated leadership of the Cesars stepped down recently amid a spat over its byzantine decision-making structure and over how to deal with the Polanski problem.
In a statement Thursday provided to The Associated Press, the Paris-based Polanski said the ceremony was turning into a "public lynching." Addressing the new accusation against him and other allegations over the years, he said: Fantasies of unhealthy minds are now treated as proven facts."