Feminist campaigners have accused France’s most prestigious film awards of acclaiming “an abuser and rapist on the run” after Roman Polanski’s latest film topped the list of nominations for prizes this year.

The Polish-born director fled from the US to France in 1978 after admitting the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl and he has been a fugitive from the US justice system ever since, despite repeated attempts to have him extradited.

His film, An Officer and a Spy, about the persecution of a French Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, is in contention for 12 Césars, the French equivalent of Oscars, including best film and best director.

Just before its November release, a French photographer, Valentine Monnier, accused Polanski of raping her in a Swiss ski resort when she was a teenager. Monnier said Polanski tried to give her a pill and beat her “into submission” at his chalet in Gstaad when she was an 18-year-old model and actor.

The accusations sparked a backlash against the film, publicity was curtailed and some screenings were cancelled after feminist protesters invaded or blockaded cinemas. Despite this, the film did well at the box office in France, with more than 1.5m ticket sales.

The campaign group Osez Le Féminisme said the nominations brought shame on the Césars and showed that France was out of step with the #MeToo movement. It said acclaiming him was equivalent to “silencing victims”.

It noted that another nominee, Adèle Haenel, who is up for best female actor for her role in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, claimed that she was sexually harassed and assaulted from the age of 12 by the French director Christophe Ruggia on her first film. Ruggia was charged with sexual assault on a minor this month; he denies the allegations.

Osez Le Féminisme tweeted: “Have we learned nothing from #MeToo? When in the US, [Harvey] Weinstein is risking life in prison, when in France Adèle Haenel breaks the omerta on the impunity of rapists in cultural life, the Césars acclaim a child abuser and rapist on the run?”

The head of the French film academy, Alain Terzian, brushed aside criticism, arguing that the film academy “should not take moral positions” about giving awards.

Polanski, 86, has said he “absolutely denies” assaulting Monnier. He told Paris Match magazine: “Obviously I have no memory of it because it is false.”

He has blamed Weinstein for his woes, claiming that the disgraced Hollywood mogul tried to brand him a “child rapist” to stop him winning an Oscar in 2003 for The Pianist.

Polanski sparked an uproar at the Venice film festival last summer by comparing his “hounding” to the antisemitic persecution of Dreyfus, the army officer at the centre of his new film.

An Officer and a Spy received no Oscar nominations, while another French film, Les Misérables, was shortlisted in the best foreign film category. Les Misérables has been nominated for 11 Césars, just behind the Polanski film’s 12.