In 2003, Roman Polanski won an Oscar for directing “The Pianist”–while he was a wanted fugitive in the United States. Twenty-five years earlier he had pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in the Hollywood Hills. On the eve of Polanski’s sentencing, he fled to France and has never returned.

But there’s a strong case to be made that Polanski rightly feared judicial misconduct, and Marina Jenovich makes that case in her thorough and evocative documentary, “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” which screens Friday and saturday at Webster University.

Even if we ignore that Polanski was a holocaust survivor and that he was recklessly implicated in the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, his treatment during the sex trail by the press and especially by the judge elicits sympathy. The judge was a womanizing publicity hound who kept a scrapbook of his celebrity trials. When the prosecutor and state psychiatrists concluded that Polanski should be released on probation, the judge reneged on a plea bargain in order to look tough.

Although Polanski, who is now a married father and an esteemed elder in France, has refused to talk about the case, Jenkovich speaks to key players on both sides (including the Mormon prosecutor), and they agree that Polanski was merely a pawn in the late judge’s game. Even the now-grown victim, who was an aspiring model and knew about the director’s very-European proclivities for young girls, appears in the film and says that Polanski has suffered enough.

Augmented by eerie clips from films such as “Rosemary’s Baby” and by Polanski’s frank admissions before he became wary of the press, this documentary is one of the best of the year.