PRESS ASSOCIATION -- Two years ago, police in Zurich, Switzerland, led Roman Polanski away to prison.
But the Oscar-winning director returned on Tuesday night to a very different reception in the city, where he wrapped himself in applause and recognition by picking up a cinematic award and releasing a "memoir" of his life that had been treated like a state secret.
The Polish-French director of Rosemary's Baby took the stage at the Zurich Film Festival to finally accept the lifetime achievement award that he was unable to pick up in 2009, after being arrested for a decades-old sex-crime case.
He had been arrested by Swiss police on arrival at the Zurich airport on a US warrant from 1978, then spent months in prison and later house arrest because of charges that he had sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977. But he successfully avoided extradition to the United States after the Swiss government refused to deport him.
Now able to travel unhindered to Switzerland, Polanski, 78, arrived at the festival hall as a spotlight followed him. Several hundred people stood to applaud him as he took his seat. He later strode to the stage amid nearly a minute's sustained clapping.
"Friends, what can I can say? Better late than never," he began, as the audience erupted in laughter.
"Two years, day for day. Certain parts of it I would rather forget. But I'm happy to be here, because I know that it was not only a blow to me, to my family, but also to the festival itself," he said. "It's a very moving moment for me."
Though Polanski could joke about the ordeal, he acknowledged the pain of it but said little else, allowing the world premier of a full-length documentary - Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir - to largely speak for him.