Emilia Pérez

Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez opened at Cannes 2024 (Audiard's third Cannes-competition feature in a decade) and won three awards there including Best Performance for the entire ensemble (Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz, jointly). The film went on to win two Academy Awards in 2025 (Best Supporting Actress (Saldaña) and Best Original Song) alongside ten further Oscar nominations. The film's reception was sharply divided across markets, with substantial critical and political controversy in Mexico over its representation of cartel violence and its US reception of Saldaña's casting.

The film is a Spanish-language musical-thriller. A Mexican cartel boss commissions an overlooked Mexico-City lawyer (Saldaña, in a role widely cited as her career achievement) to organise a faked death, a confidential gender transition in a Bangkok clinic, and a new identity as Emilia Pérez (Gascón). Years later, Emilia tries to re-enter the family she left behind. Selena Gomez plays Emilia's former wife Jessi; Adriana Paz plays Emilia's later love Epifanía.

Audiard composed and developed the film with composer Clément Ducol and singer-songwriter Camille (the original songs El Mal, Mi Camino and others). The film's structural ambition (combining cartel thriller, musical, gender-identity drama, and procedural) produced one of the most-debated festival films of its year. Saldaña's central performance is the film's broadest critical-consensus achievement.