Culture | Split screen

Why “Emilia Pérez” is loved by Hollywood and hated by everyone else

And the Oscar for Worst Picture goes to…

Selena Gomez in "Emilia Perez"
Photograph: Eyevine

Lockdown has a lot to answer for. As many were baking sourdough at home, Jacques Audiard, a French film-maker, was writing an opera libretto about a Mexican cartel boss who fakes his own death, undergoes gender-transition surgery and campaigns for the missing victims of the drug war. The resulting film, a trans-narco-musical fever dream called “Emilia Pérez”, has earned 13 Oscar nominations. Since the Academy Awards began in 1929, only three films have received more. No other foreign-language film ever has.

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