Netflix's 'Emilia Perez' gets 13 Oscar nominations

Film pundits had long placed their bets on French director Jacques Audiard's musical "Emilia Perez," about a Mexican drug lord who transitions to a woman and starts a new life.

On Thursday, this Spanish-language Netflix musical drama scored a total of 13 Oscar nominations, including best international feature film and best picture. Set in Mexico but mostly filmed in France, the film also made history with Karla Sofia Gascon becoming the first openly trans actor to be nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as the film's titular character. 

The film leads with the most number of nominations, while "The Brutalist," about a visionary architect and his wife who flee post-war Europe in 1947, and the renowned Broadway musical "Wicked" have 10 nominations apiece. Meanwhile, the Vatican-based thriller "Conclave" and "A Complete Unknown," which focuses on Bob Dylan's early years, got eight nominations each.

A mockery of a musical

However, "Emilia Perez" has also had its fair share of detractors.

The film tells the story of how the high-powered lawyer Rita (played by best supporting actress nominee Zoe Saldana) takes on an unexpected assignment: helping a Mexican cartel leader (Gascon) fake their death and undergo gender-affirming procedures. 

The US LGBTQ+ organization Glaad has called it "retrograde" in its characterization of the transgender protagonist played by Gascon. 

Mexican critics and industry figures have also criticized the lack of Mexican representation in the film's leading cast and crew and how the country is depicted, as well as the treatment of such serious subject matter. 

The film was already widely criticized by Mexican users on X after its Golden Globes success, where it won in four categories. Mexican screenwriter Hector Guillen tagged the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which runs the Oscars, the day after the Globes and published a poster saying: "Mexico hates Emilia Pérez/ 'Racist Euro Centrist Mockery'/ Almost 500K dead and France decides to do a musical."

Speaking to the BBC, Guillen called Audiard "a great filmmaker," but added, "There's a drug war, nearly 500,000 deaths since 2006 and 100,000 missing in the country."

He added that part of the plot is about mothers searching for their disappeared children, "one of the most vulnerable groups in Mexico. And there were zero words in the four Golden Globe acceptance speeches to the victims."

Germany gets Oscar nod with Iranian film

Meanwhile, Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof's "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" earned Germany a nomination in the best international feature film category.

The work was inspired by the mass protests in Iran in 2022 that were sparked by the killing of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, by the so-called morality police. Rasoulof heard the demonstrations from his prison cell, which gave him the idea for a thriller exploring state violence, paranoia and censorship.

"The Seed of the Sacred Fig" follows Iman, an investigator for Iran's Revolutionary Court who is loyal to the regime but has begun to question the arbitrary and summary nature of the death warrants he is asked to sign.

Though essentially an Iranian film, it was produced by Hamburg-based Run Way Pictures, received funding from a northern German film board, and has a German distributor, all of which made it eligible for selection as the nation's offering for the Oscars. 

Rasoulof was awarded a special jury prize for "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" at the Cannes Film Festival in May not long after escaping Iran and completing the film abroad. The film also won the film industry's Fipresci Prize, which was awarded during the festival.

Announcements postponed due to wildfires

Originally planned for January 17, the Oscar nominations announcement was postponed twice after thewildfires outbreak that began January 7 and burned through Pacific Palisades, Altadena and other areas around Los Angeles, causing widespread destruction.

The fires affected many in the film industry, with some even calling on the academy to cancel this year's Oscars altogether. However, the Academy argued that the 97th Oscars will go ahead on Sunday, March 2, because of their economic importance for Los Angeles and as a symbol of the industry's resilience. 

The organizers have vowed that this year's awards will "celebrate the work that unites us as a global film community and acknowledge those who fought so bravely against the wildfires."

Edited by: Cristina Burack