France has selected Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical Emilia Perez to represent it in the Best International Feature Film category at the 97th Academy Awards.
The drama stars Karla Sofía Gascón as cartel leader Emilia who enlists the help of unappreciated lawyer Rita (Saldana) to help her fake her death so she can live authentically as her true self.
It premiered at Cannes, where it earned its four actresses – Gascón, Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz – a collective Best Actress award, and also clinched the jury prize.
The film was selected from a short list of four films which also included swashbuckler The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte; French-produced Indian drama All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia and Misericordia by Alain Guiraudie.
This year’s revamped selection committee featured sales agent Carole Baraton, producer Nadim Cheikhroua (Four Daughters), Venice Golden Lion winning Happening director and writer Audrey Diwan, distributor, producer and writer Michèle Halberstadt, sales agent Grégoire Melin, actress Clémence Poésy, producer David Thion (Anatomy of a Fall), producer and distributor Rosalie Varda, producer Wachsberger (CODA) and director, writer and producer Florian Zeller (The Father).
They made the selection after auditioning the sales agents, producers and U.S. distributors of the shortlisted titles on Wednesday morning.
Deadline hears that Netflix, which swooped on U.S. rights for Emilia Perez in the wake of its buzzy Cannes world premiere, pledged generous support for the awards campaign.
The movie is produced by Why Not Productions and Audiard’s Page 114. The Veterans handled international sales, brokering the Netflix deal with CAA Media Finance.
Pathé released the film theatrically in France on August 21, drawing some 735,000 spectators for a gross of roughly $5.9M. It will receive a limited release on the U.S. ahead a November 13 launch on Netflix.
France overhauled its Best International Feature Film entry selection committee over the summer, upping its numbers and broadening the scope of the experience of its members, in a bid to end a 30-year awards hiatus in the category, even if its cinema talents have been feted in other categories.
There was upset last year, after the committee selected Tran Anh Hung’s period drama The Taste of Things, over hot favorite, Justine Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall. The Taste of Things, starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel, made it to the short list but was not nominated.
Neon ran a far buzzier campaign in other categories for Anatomy of a Fall, which then clinched five nominations, including for best film and best actress for Sandra Hüller, and won best screenplay for Triet and Arthur Harari.
Samuel Goldwyn Films appears to be set on a similar strategy for The Count of Monte Cristo, which was also regarded as a front-runner to be selected as the French Oscar candidate alongside Emilia Perez.
The distributor, which previously enjoyed success in the Best International Feature Film category with Denmark’s Another Round, has set a December release for the film in the U.S. and is planning to submit the film into all categories
France last won the international film Oscar with Régis Wargnier’s Indochine in 1993. Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables was the last French film to make it through to the final nomination stage in 2020.
