BANGKOK, Thailand -- One of the reasons Roman Polanski chose to interpret Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist for the big screen was simple: he wanted to make a movie for children.

"I'm happy that my children and their friends, to whom I showed this film, gave me good reviews this time," he said in Bangkok Saturday to some laughter from the press corps.

Polanski's Oliver Twist - an adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic tale of a penniless orphan who wanders from a workhouse into a gang, searching for a place in the world - was the opening film at the Third World Film Festival, which kicked off Friday night in Bangkok.

"It's a real pleasure to see a room full of children watching this film because it is so different from what children are offered on the cinema screen nowadays," he said.

Polanski, whose screen credits include Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, won an Oscar in 2002 for his Holocaust drama, The Pianist. He left the United States in 1978 rather than face sentencing on child-sex charges, and lives in Paris with his wife, actress Emmanuelle Seigner, and their two children.

Polanski said he intended for the movie to air at schools, and noted that in France, film screenings were held for teachers who now want to include it in their curriculums.

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