Filmmaker Roman Polanski is skipping the awards ceremony for France’s equivalent of the Oscars where his latest movie leads this year’s nominations, because of protests prompted by a new rape accusation against him.

Women’s rights activists have called for a boycott of today’s Cesars ceremony in Paris and plastered anti-Polanski banners and graffiti at the event venue and the Cesar academy headquarters.

The 86-year old Paris-based director released a statement saying the ceremony was turning into a “public lynching” adding the “fantasies of unhealthy minds are now treated as proven facts.”

Polanski is still wanted in the United States for the rape of a 13 year old girl in 1977.