Viva Emilia Perez! It is the musical comedy by Jacques Audiard that will be proposed by France to compete in the category of Best Foreign Film, at the Oscars 2025. The National Center of Cinematography (CNC), announced it yesterday evening.
Shot in Spanish, this film is a gem of originality in terms of content and form. Between a dark thriller and choreography to the sound of reggaeton, it tells the story of the repentance of a Mexican drug lord who changes his life and becomes a woman… In theaters since August 21, it won the Jury Prize at the last Cannes Film Festival. It also earned a collective acting award for Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and the transgender lead actress Karla Sofía Gascón.
Read also: Emilia Perez, Jacques Audiard’s latest film, is a bomb of humanity
Next meeting on January 17th
The French application must be sent to the Academy of Oscars, which will announce on January 17, 2025 which countries are nominated in this category.
Last year, the committee responsible for choosing the French candidate came under heavy criticism for preferring The passion of Dodin Bouffantfrom Tran Anh Hung, to the candidate expected by many, Anatomy of a fallPalme d’Or at Cannes and success in France and internationally.
France was ultimately not selected to compete in the best foreign film category. The episode resulted in a major overhaul of the committee of professionals responsible for choosing the French candidate.
There were four of them…
Now made up of eleven cinema professionals with equal numbers of women and men (including one of the producers of Aanatomy of a fall) and chaired by Charles Tesson, former head of Critics’ Week in Cannes, the commission pre-selected four films last week. In addition to Emilia Perez, The Count of Monte Cristo, one of the biggest box office hits of the year Mercy by Alain Guiraudie and All We Imagine as Lightby Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia, were in the running
