Filmmaker Roman Polanski will preside over this year’s Cesar Awards ceremony, the French equivalent of the Oscars.

The Academy of Arts and Techniques of Cinema said the 83-year-old is expected to deliver the opening and closing speeches during the ceremony in Paris.

Roman Polanski (Joel Ryan/PA)
Roman Polanski (Joel Ryan/PA)

Roman, who lives in France, won eight Cesars over the course of his career, including one for best director in 2014 for his film Venus In Furs.

Academy president Alain Terzian said Roman is an “insatiable aesthete reinventing his art and works over the years”.

The filmmaker is wanted in the US in a case involving sex with a minor that has been hanging over him for almost 40 years.

The Cesars Awards ceremony takes place on February 24.