“Emilia Pérez”: Why This Year's Most-Nominated Film Is Also the Most Controversial Oscar Contender

• Emilia Pérez leads this year’s Oscar nominations, with star Karla Sofía Gascón making history as the first openly transgender Best Actress nominee

• But public figures and audiences alike have criticized the Jacques Audiard movie’s depiction of trans issues and Mexico

• Gascón has recently apologized after coming under fire for old social media posts, the latest in a series of controversies for the film

There’s no movie quite like Emilia Pérez, a musical thriller from French filmmakers about a fictional Mexican cartel leader transitioning into a woman. Despite being an unprecedented, genre-mashing original, the Netflix film has also emerged as awards season’s most controversial contender.

Writer-director Jacques Audiard's musical has steadily generated buzz starting with a glowing 2024 Cannes Film Festival reception where it won the best actress prize. The latter was shared between Emilia Pérez’s four stars: Karla Sofía Gascón, who plays the kingpin-turned-titular character; Zoe Saldaña, as the beleaguered lawyer helping Emilia transition in secret; Selena Gomez, as Emilia’s unsuspecting wife and mother of their children; and Adriana Paz as Emilia’s eventual lover.

Gascón, 52, would also go on to make history as the first openly transgender actress to receive best actress nominations at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Golden Globes, Academy Awards and more.

"I am who I am; know who you [are],” the Spanish star said onstage at the Globes on Jan. 3 when Emilia Pérez won for best comedy or musical motion picture.

“The light always wins over darkness,” she added, speaking to the movie’s themes of gender-affirming empowerment. “You can maybe put us in jail, you can beat us up, but you never can take away our soul, or our resistance, or our dignity."

Related: Zoe Saldaña Snuggles with Her Golden Globe After Emotional Emilia Pérez Win: 'How We're Going to Bed Tonight'

But even before Emilia Pérez led the 2025 Oscar nominations tally on Jan. 23 with 13 nods including Best Picture — the most-ever for a predominantly non-English-language film — the film was under scrutiny. While the likes of Guillermo del Toro and Meryl Streep voiced support, critics gave it a mixed reception (review site Rotten Tomatoes lists it as 74% certified fresh), and moviegoing audiences ranked it among the year’s worst (19% on the Popcornmeter as of Jan. 31).

Transgender and Mexican viewers became increasingly vocal upon the movie’s Nov. 13 streaming debut on Netflix, with several film clips going viral. GLAAD, the LGBTQ advocacy group, called Emilia Pérez a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” and a “step backward for trans representation.” Writing for the publication Them, Fran Tirado criticized Audiard’s story as “an idea of transness so completely from the cis imagination.”

Other commentators and social media users questioned the authenticity of Audiard and his actors’ portrayal of modern Mexico. Critic Gaby Meza told ABC News it was “not in the trans experience, not in the narco experience.” On her Hablando de Cine podcast in December, Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez agreed with Meza when she criticized Gomez’s performance in the film, saying Spanish was “neither her primary nor secondary language nor fifth," per The Hollywood Reporter. (After Gomez, 32, responded to a TikTok clip of the interview by writing, "I'm sorry I did the best I could with the time I was given,” Derbez posted an apology to her.)

Related: Selena Gomez Spent 6 Months Taking Spanish Lessons to Prep for 'Emotional' Emilia Pérez Role

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

Recently, Gascón has come under fire for comments she made in interviews and old social media posts. After journalist Sarah Hagi shared screenshots of several of the Oscar nominee’s posts on X (formerly Twitter) focusing on Muslim culture, George Floyd, diversity and more, Gascón deleted the posts, issued an apology, then deactivated her X account on Friday, Jan. 31.

In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter that day, Gascón said a “campaign of hate and misinformation” caused her to close the account. “Perhaps my words are not correct, many times due to ignorance or pure mistake. I apologize again if anyone has ever felt offended or in the future. I am a human being who also made, makes and will make mistakes from which I will learn. I am not perfect."

Related: 2025 Oscar Nominations: A Full Recap of the Surprises, Reactions and Records

How might these controversies affect Emilia Pérez’s prospects at the upcoming SAG Awards, BAFTA Film Awards and Oscars? One X user, linking to Hagi’s posts, wrote that they are “curious” about how award voters will handle Gascón’s “vile tweets.” The actress' “bigoted” and “violent” social media posts "have blown up awards season; the only possible comparison is to Will Smith storming the Oscar stage to slap Chris Rock," opined Daniel D'Addario for Variety on Jan. 31. “It’s raised existential questions about how her campaign, or, at its end, her Oscar night, can go on.”

Emilia Pérez is now streaming on Netflix. Ahead of its controversies, Tom Gliatto presciently called it “the year’s biggest, strangest movie extravaganza” in a film review for PEOPLE.

Read the original article on People