Fugitive filmmaker Roman Polanski, convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl, was given a top honor at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday. Polanski, 86, who fled the United States after his guilty plea decades ago, got the Grand Jury Prize for his movie J’accuse (An Officer and a Spy), which is about a wrongfully convicted man. Variety reported that the Rosemary’s Baby director was not on hand in Venice to accept the award for his first film since he was thrown out of the United States’ Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
