Two and a half months from now the path may finally be cleared for the exiled Roman Polanski to return to the U.S. without fear of incarceration, and finally be free to direct U.S. projects on U.S. soil, if he so chooses.

Yesterday Polanski’s attorneys filed a complaint with the Los Angeles Superior Court seeking to have Polanski’s 31-year-old sexual misconduct charges dismissed. And the catalyst, it was stated, was Marina Zenovich‘s Academy-dissed (i.e., not Oscar-nominated) documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.

Polanski’s attorneys cited “extraordinary new evidence” contained in Zenovich’s doc as reason to reopen the case.

Variety‘s Diane Garrett has reported that “the complaint zeroes in on interviews in which then-deputy district attorney David Wells admits discussing the case with Judge Lawrence Rittenband during legal proceedings from the 1970s and further charges the current District Attorney’s Office with misconduct in statements made upon the doc’s June release.

Polanski, the complaint charges, “was and continues to be the victim of repeated, unlawful and unethical misconduct on the part of the L.A. District Attorney’s Office and L.A. Superior Court.” A hearing has been set for 1.21.09.

I was first told about the development by Zenovich at last night’s Gotham Awards. I later showed her this Michael Cieply story about it in my iPhone. The story contained a quote from Zenovich, who’d spoken to Cieply only an hour or so earlier, saying that she was glad that her film had helped to affect things, that she considered it a validation and that the development has mollified her disappointment over her film not being short-listed for Best Feature Doc. The quote has since disappeared from the Cieply story.