Roman Polanski

Likes to arrange shots from the protagonist's perspective and slowly pan around the room to points of interest as the character notices them.
By the end of his films, the protagonist often meets an uncertain, melancholic future (La última puerta (1999), El escritor fantasma (2010), El bebé de Rosemary (1968), Barrio Chino (1974) and Macbeth (1971)).
Often key scenes or plot are featured near or associated with water.
His films are often told in a subjective narrative.

After Polanski fled American justice, the judge over his case swore to put him behind bars again. Though the judge died in 1989, the director still cannot return to the U.S. as he would be arrested immediately.
Convicted of sodomy and statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl after plea bargaining, Polanski served time in prison in California, but prison officials released him sooner than judge Laurence J. Rittenband's original sentence had intended. The judge then sought to have Polanski brought to court again for further sentencing. Rather than do so, Polanski fled to Europe to avoid and escape a second arrest and incarceration. In 2013, his former victim, Samantha Geimer - who was 50 years old and had long ago forgiven him for the crime - detailed her story in her autobiography "The Girl" (2013).
In 1969, while Polanski was out of town on business, his wife, actress Sharon Tate, was brutally murdered by members of Charles Manson's cult family, though Manson only ordered the killing and was not present during the murders. Tate was eight months pregnant with Polanski's first child at the time. Polanski has said that his life's biggest regret was not being present at the house the night his wife and four others were murdered.
Has not returned to the United States since 1978.
Roman and his father are Holocaust survivors. His father was Jewish, and his half-Jewish mother (who was murdered in Auschwitz) had been raised as a Roman Catholic.

Normal love isn't interesting. I assure you that it's incredibly boring.
My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instincts, but in a disciplined way.
[on filmmaking] You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.
[on his style of filmmaking] I don't really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don't, it's like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line.
The best films are because of nobody but the director.