France selects 'Emilia Perez' as Oscar submission

France has picked Jacques Audiard’s Mexico-set musical Emilia Perez to represent the country in the best international feature category at the 2025 Academy Awards as it attempts to sing its way to a victory in the category for the first time in more than 30 years.

The primarily Spanish-language song-filled film is about cartel leader Emilia, who enlists an unappreciated lawyer to help fake her death so Emilia can live authentically as her true self.

It won both the Cannes Jury prize for director Audiard and a shared best actress award for its female cast Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana and Adriana Paz and has since played at Telluride and Toronto. It next heads to New York Film Festival, which starts later this month.

It is produced by Pascal Caucheteux of Why Not Productions and Audiard and Valérie Schermann of Page 114. Le Pacte released Emilia Perez in France on August 21 where it has sold 760,000 tickets to date.

The film will premiere in select theatres this autumn before heading to Netflix in the US, UK and Canada on November 13. 

Emilia Perez was selected by a recently revamped 11-member selection committee among four finalists that also included Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s The Count Of Monte-Cristo, Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia and Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light.

The committee, appointed by France’s cultural minister Rachida Dati based on a recommendation from national film body CNC, was presided over by former Cannes Critics’ Week artistic director Charles Tesson and comprised producers Patrick Wachsberger, David Thion and Nadim Cheikhroua, sales agents Carole Baraton and Gregoire Melin, filmmakers Audrey Diwan and Florian Zeller, actress Clémence Poesy, producer and distributor Rosalie Varda, and writer-producer-distributor Michèle Halberstadt.

Committee members met Wednesday (September 18) with the producers, international sales representatives and US distributors of each film on the shortlist before announcing their final decision.

Emilia Perez may also be a contender in other awards categories including best film.  

Audiard’s A Prophet notably earned a nomination in the best international feature category in 2010. 

The stakes are high after last year’s best international feature submission from France was the source of controversy when Tran Anh Hung’s culinary romance The Taste Of Things was chosen over Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winning Anatomy Of A Fall.

The latter went on to earn five nominations in other categories and took home the award for best screenplay, leaving the selection committee to face criticism over the country missing out on an opportunity to earn what would have been its first Oscar in the category in more than 30 years.

France hasn’t won a best international feature Academy Award since 1993 for Regis Warner’s Indochine and hasn’t been nominated since Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables in 2020.

Several other French co-productions are in play in the best international feature race including Mati Diop’s Berlin Golden Bear-winning documentary Dahomey for Senegal, Miguel Gomes’ Cannes best director prize-winning Grand Tour for Portugal, Min Bahadur Bham’s Berlin Competition title Shambhala for Nepal, Rithy Panh’s Meeting With Pol Pot for Cambodia, Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow for Latvia, and Nabil Ayouch’s Everybody Loves Touda for Morocco.

While not selected from France’s shortlist, Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light is a potential entry for India.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will unveil its 15-film shortlist for the best international feature category on December 17 and the five nominees will be announced on January 17, 2025 ahead of the March 2 ceremony.