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First things first: I’d like to reassure all you power brokers, bosses, kingpins, big shots – yes, it hurts It doesn’t matter that we know this, that we know you, that we’ve had your power shoved down our throats a dozen times – it still fucking hurts You’ve been whining and bellyaching all weekend, complaining that you’re forced to use article 49 subsection 3 to ram your laws through parliament, that you can’t get a minute’s peace to honour Polanski, that everyone’s pissing on your parade, but don’t worry, under all that pathetic whining we can hear you revelling in the fact that you’re the real bosses, the hotshots, and the message is coming through loud and clear: you are not about to allow this concept of consent to stand Where’s the fun in belonging to a powerful clique if you have to worry about the consent of the weak? I’m not the only one who feels like howling with rage and helplessness at your pretty little show of strength, and I’m certainly not the only one to feel sullied at the sight of this orgy of impunity   It’s not remotely surprising that the académie des Césars would vote to name Roman Polanski the Best Director of 2020 Grotesque, insulting, sickening – but not surprising When you give a guy 25 million to make a TV movie, the budget says it all If the struggle against rising antisemitism really mattered to the French film industry, we’d know all about it After all, we know all about the fact that you’re sick and tired of listening to the oppressed telling their own stories in their own words So when you heard about this subtle analogy between a problematic film director being heckled by hundreds of feminists outside a couple of cinemas and Dreyfus, a nineteenth-century victim of French antisemitism, you jumped at the chance Twenty-five million euros to make that point Congratulations Let’s have a round of applause for the investors, because it takes a village to come up with a budget like this – Gaumont Distribution,