“I am extraordinarily happy,” French director Jacques Audiard told AFP after shattering the record for nominations for a non-English-speaking film at the Oscars, “Emilia Perez,” on Thursday.
His film garnered 13 Oscar nominations on Thursday, becoming the most nominated non-English language film of all time.
This musical odyssey about the gender transition of a Mexican drug trafficker is ahead of “Tigers and Dragons” (2000) and “Roma” (2018), which previously held this record with 10 nominations.
“I am completely happy, especially since I wanted the actresses to be nominated,” the 65-year-old filmmaker said by telephone, a few minutes before boarding a flight to Montevideo, where he is continuing a tour promotional.
Actress Karla Sofia Gascon, revelation of the film, is nominated for the statuette for best actress, Zoe Saldana for best supporting actress.
“I knew the Oscars a long time ago, at the time of + A Prophet +”, nominated 15 years ago for the Oscar for best foreign film, he recalled. “But it wasn’t the same pressure,” he added. There, with the double nomination for best director and best film, “it’s a very solid campaign that we must lead.”
-In the category of nominations for the title of best director, Audiard rubs shoulders with a compatriot, Coralie Fargeat (“The Substance”). “There is a rather curious phenomenon of French films like mine and that of Coralie which find themselves in the competition,” he noted.
“It’s a mixed cinema, I wonder if it’s not a trend, this desire to make films with different linguistic elements, actors and particular objects,” he underlined.
He also brushed aside the ongoing controversy in Mexico, where some denounced, even before the film was released in theaters, the image it would give of the country and the problem of drug trafficking.
“There are those who have seen the film, and those who have not seen the film,” he said. “My intentions seem virtuous, but I notice a problem there.”
“We can also not talk about drug trafficking! But it was close to my heart, I perhaps did it clumsily,” he added.
