This HBO documentary is not about Roman Polanski’s entire life. In fact, it is to the greatest extent centered in the court case from which he fled in 1978, where he was sentenced for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, in fact a 13-year-old girl. A lot of archive footage is used and is very well-edited to paint a picture of a great director who has battled a lot of turmoils in life (most notably the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate). A lot of judicial figures are interviewed in depth regarding the court case, the very peculiar (and probably criminal) judge Rittenband, along with journalists from the time and friends of Polanski. The music – mostly period jazz – is used very nicely, often alongside period snippets from TV news. The main character is not interviewed for this documentary, and while I feel the documentary skirts away too much from Polanski’s pedophile act, his victim has since forgiven him and there are a couple of interesting facts about her mother’s role in the case. All in all this is a good documentary about the chilling events surrounding a human being who happens to be a world-renowned film-director. By the way, David Wells has admitted to lying in the documentary, and it’s interesting to see if anything will really happen to Polanski now that he – 31 years after fleeing the USA – is arrested in Switzerland because of his outstanding punishment.