Jacques Audiard's “Emilia Perez” will represent France at the 2025 Oscars

Yesterday, the Oscars committee responsible for selecting the French candidate who might be awarded the most coveted statuette in the world of cinema at the next ceremony to be held in Los Angeles on March 2nd, 2025 announced its decision. It is Emilia Pérez by Jacques Audiard that will represent France at the 97th Academy Awards and compete in the Best International Feature Film category. After A Prophet, Rust and Bone, and Paris, 13th District, Audiard’s tenth film, which could also be described as a musical, released in theaters on August 21, has already gained widespread acclaim. After being generously awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, chaired by director Greta Gerwig, where it received the Jury Prize and the Best Actress Award for Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz, the film drew crowds upon its cinema release, with no less than 750,000 spectators.

The film tells the story of Rita, a young Mexican prodigy lawyer who finds herself forced to collaborate with a cartel boss whose plan is to become a woman. A musical narration of a chaotic and dangerous reality, set against the backdrop of the drug trade, which is neither cheerful nor poetic. The musical was in competition until recently with The Count of Monte Cristo by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière, which had more than 8 million tickets sold, Mercy by Alain Guiraudie, a crime thriller starring Félix Kysyl, Catherine Frot, and Jean-Baptiste Durand, and All We Imagine As Light, the debut film of Indian director Payal Kapadia, who notably won the Grand Prix at the last Cannes Film Festival.

A difficult choice following last year's controversy, when The taste of things by Dodin Bouffant was chosen over Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall (which still won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay). This year, the jury underwent changes, with the arrival of Audrey Diwan and Florian Zeller. David Thion, co-producer of Anatomy of a Fall, is also among the selection members, along with actress Clémence Poésy and of course the president of the committee, Charles Tesson, film critic and historian, former general delegate of the Critics’ Week at Cannes. Let’s hope Emilia Pérez follows in the footsteps of her compatriot All Quiet on the Western Front, which left the 2022 ceremony with no fewer than four statuettes, including Best International Film and Best Cinematography. But let’s keep in mind that competition is fierce, and only five feature films will make it to the final list of those truly contending for the golden statuette. The official announcement is expected to be made in January.