“We know how this evening will unfold already,” Mr. Polanksi said in a statement. “What place can there be in such deplorable conditions for a film about the defense of truth, the fight for justice, blind hate and anti-Semitism?”

Mr. Polanski pulled out of the 2017 awards for the same reason.

Image Mr. Polanski has been a fugitive from the United States since 1978, when he fled before sentencing in a statutory rape case. He has faced more accusations of sexual assault since then. Credit... Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

On Friday, the French police fired tear gas outside the Paris concert hall hosting the César Film Awards in a clash with people protesting the director, according to local news reports. Protesters also pulled down a safety barrier outside the venue, but the police pushed them back, so they did not make it onto the red carpet.

Other demonstrators waved placards reading, “Shame on an industry that protects rapists.”

The United States considers Mr. Polanski a fugitive of justice but has been unable to secure his extradition. He has also faced other accusations of sexual assault. In November, Valentine Monnier, a photographer, accused Mr. Polanski of raping her in 1975, when she was 18, in a ski chalet in Switzerland. He has denied the accusations.

Reviewers praised “J’accuse” at the Venice Film Festival last year. “The longer you look at it, the more impressive it grows,” Xan Brooks wrote in The Guardian. It won similar acclaim in France after its release in November, and the film topped the country’s box office. But it was also met with protests, and some in France’s film industry distanced themselves from Mr. Polanski.

After the César nominations were announced in January, a host of French feminist organizations said they would protest the ceremony. “If rape is an art, give Polanski all the Césars,” they said in an open letter published in a leading newspaper.