On the night of the 45th César awards, Maïga gave a speech calling out the lack of diversity in French cinema. The speech was unexpected and contrasted with the congratulatory speeches that had taken place throughout the evening, the predominantly white audience of the "French Oscars" were all frozen in silent surprise and discomfort. Maïga began her speech by greeting the 12 black people (out of the 1,600 guests) and proceeded to outline the ways in which black people and their stories are systemically ignored in French media, TV, and cinema."We survived whitewashing, blackface, tonnes of dealer roles, housekeepers with a Bwana accent, we survived the roles of terrorists, all the roles of hypersexualised girls...but we are not going to leave French cinema alone."—Aïssa Maïga, 2020 César awardsWhen Roman Polanski was awarded Best Director later in the ceremony, Maïga walked out along with Adèle Haenel to join the protestors outside the awards ceremony who were chanting "Polanski is a rapist".