Emilia Pérez film wins high Spanish movie prize amid Karla Sofía Gascón furore | Emilia Pérez

Narco-musical Emilia Pérez has gained greatest European movie at Spain’s equal of the Oscars amid the fallout from its star’s previous racist and Islamophobic social media posts.

Karla Sofía Gascón – the star of the movie and the primary transgender girl to be nominated for a greatest actress Oscar – didn’t attend the ceremony after previous social media posts emerged by which she denigrates Islam, China and African American George Floyd, unleashing a scandal that has harmed her popularity and the movie.

Gascón – who has apologised for the feedback – has been dropped by her writer, criticised by distinguished politicians and is already understood to have been faraway from the movie’s campaigning supplies by its studio, Netflix.

Voting for the Goya awards closed on 24 January, days earlier than the posts had been uncovered.

The principally Spanish-language musical tells the story of a Mexican drug cartel boss who transitions to life as a girl and turns her again on crime.

Her feedback have been described as “completely hateful” by the film’s director, Jacques Audiard, whereas Gascón’s co-star, Zoe Saldana, has mentioned the views expressed had saddened and disillusioned her.

Earlier than the scandal broke, the movie earned 13 Oscar nods, picked up 4 Golden Globes in January and gained a number of prizes finally yr’s Cannes movie competition.

Gascón lives close to the Spanish capital, Madrid, however didn’t attend the Goya awards ceremony in Granada.

Though the social media posts are thought to have destroyed her Oscar hopes, some have questioned the size and ferocity of the backlash the actor faces.

In a column in El País on Wednesday, the author and journalist Sergio del Molino argued that Gascón the actor, and Gascón the particular person must be thought-about individually, and that she shouldn’t be penalised come Oscar evening.

“If the individuals on the Academy had been satisfied that Karla Sofía Gascón deserved an Oscar for her work on Emilia Pérez, there’s no cause why they need to really feel in a different way at the moment,” he wrote. “Irrespective of how idiotic, racist, insulting or in unhealthy style her tweets from years in the past had been, they weren’t a part of her efficiency. And in the event that they deemed that efficiency prize-worthy per week in the past, they nonetheless ought to, as a result of the movie hasn’t modified.”

One other author and journalist, Manuel Jabois, instructed Cadena Ser that “anybody who doesn’t really feel a bit sorry for her has an issue”, whereas acknowledging that there was a debate available about learn how to separate Gascón’s “inventive expertise from her disgusting and racist” opinions.

“And there’s one other debate about how far the rejection, or cancellation – by Netflix, by colleagues, by the federal government of this nation – can go,” mentioned Jabois. “Irrespective of how gross I discover her 10-year-old opinions, I condemn the absurd cruelty and the absurd solitude to which she’s been condemned.”

With Agence France-Presse