In 1977 the French director of Polish origins, Roman Polanski, fled the United States before sentence was passed at the trial judging him for the rape of a minor. The director Marina Zenovich reviews this controversial time in Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, shown at the Sundance festival but which has been released in Spain with only one copy, screened at the Alexandra cinema in Barcelona.

Polanski, with a detention order over his head if he sets foot in the United States, won the Oscar for Best Director in 2004 for his work on the film The Pianist, but given his situation of a fugitive from American justice he was unable to attend the ceremony to collect his statuette.

In this documentary, the American director Marina Zenovich portrays his arrival in Hollywood at the end of the sixties, with the recognition he received from the industry for the success of Rosemary’s Baby. But renown came hand in hand with controversy, such as the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, in 1969, at the hands of the followers of the Charles Manson sect, while she was expecting their first child.

However, Zenovich really focuses on the rape case and the media feeding frenzy which followed. For this reason she contacts Polanski’s lawyer, the actual abuse victim, the police officials in charge of the case, some of the director’s acquaintances and some journalists who covered the case. In this way she shows that there may have been certain irregularities in the case, and that Polanski’s decision to flee the country could have been motivated by fear of not receiving a fair trial.