THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 58 AUGUST 21, 2019
POLANSKI: LAURENT VITEUR/GETTY IMAGES. BARBERA: PASCAL LE SEGRETAIN/GETTY IMAGES.KING:COURTESY OF NETFLIX.MARRIAGE: WILSON WEBB/NETFLIX.OFFICER: COURTESY OF PLAYTIME.SEBERG: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS.CITIZEN: COURTESY OF JIGSAW PRODUCTIONS.Illustration by Michael BurdickVENICE
Film
FESTIVAL
HOW VENICE BECAME THE F-You
with rape and ultimately acquitted. Polanski
infamously pleaded guilty to a statutory rape
charge in California in 1978 but fled the coun-
try before sentencing and remains a fugitive
from American justice. All the while, Venice
continued to show little welcome to female
directors, selecting only two for its 21-film
competition roster this year.
“Venice is completely tone-deaf about
issues related to #MeToo and Time’s Up,” says
Melissa Silverstein, founder of the advocacy
website Women and Hollywood and director
of the Athena Film Festival. “This is all part
of the world we are living in now. You can’t
just pretend that having a person like Roman
Polanski or Nate Parker in your lineup is not
going to cause a huge reaction.”
In an era when Hollywood has little toler-
ance for talent swept up in a #MeToo scandal
— as when Amazon dropped Woody Allen’s
A Rainy Day in New York amid resurfacedallegations from his daughter Dylan Farrow
that he molested her when she was 7 — and
even notoriously macho Cannes has made
strides with female award winners, Venice
stands alone as the last major un-woke
film festival.
“Personally, I have a problem with cel-
ebrating work from men who have had a
problematic relationship to women,” Berlin-
based producer Janine Jackowiski (Toni
Erdmann) tells THR. “You can see how in
America, if you don’t play by the rules, you’re
out. Here in Europe, there’s still the idea of
the ‘genius’ who is allowed to do anything
and should be celebrated for it.”
Both Polanski and Parker have been
persona non grata in Hollywood. Last year
Polanski was expelled from the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For his
sophomore feature, Parker couldn’t land
traditional Hollywood funding and reliedWho’s afraid of poor optics?
Apparently, not the Venice
Film Festival. One year after
signing a gender-parity pledge
as #MeToo and Time’s Up
concerns swept the film industry, the festival
has raised eyebrows with a series of moves
that are being met with condemnation.
First, fest director Alberto Barbera drew
fire by inviting Roman Polanski to pre-
miere his latest film, An Officer and a Spy,
in competition at this year’s edition. He
then upped the ante by adding Nate Parker’s
American Skin to the official lineup, in the
(noncompetitive) Sconfini section. The film
marks Parker’s first since his debut feature,
The Birth of a Nation, which Fox Searchlight
bought for a record-breaking $17.5 million
after its 2016 Sundance premiere, only to
see the movie tank amid renewed scrutiny
of a 1999 trial in which Parker was chargedAlready
under fire for its
lack of female
representation,
the event
stunned the
global film world
by setting
premieres with
Roman Polanski
and Nate Parker.
Some say it’s
an intentional
provocation:
‘The message is
loud and clear’
By
SCOTT ROXBOROUGH
and TATIANA SIEGEL