Narco-musical Emilia Pérez has won best European film at Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars amid the fallout from its star’s past racist and Islamophobic social media posts.
Karla Sofía Gascón – the star of the film and the first transgender woman to be nominated for a best actress Oscar – did not attend the ceremony after old social media posts emerged in which she denigrates Islam, China and African American George Floyd, unleashing a scandal that has harmed her reputation and the film.
Gascón – who has apologised for the comments – has been dropped by her publisher, criticised by prominent politicians and is already understood to have been removed from the film’s campaigning materials by its studio, Netflix.
Voting for the Goya awards closed on 24 January, days before the posts were uncovered.
The mostly Spanish-language musical tells the story of a Mexican drug cartel boss who transitions to life as a woman and turns her back on crime.
Her comments have been described as “absolutely hateful” by the movie’s director, Jacques Audiard, while Gascón’s co-star, Zoe Saldana, has said the views expressed had saddened and disappointed her.
Before the scandal broke, the film earned 13 Oscar nods, picked up four Golden Globes in January and won multiple prizes at last year’s Cannes film festival.
Gascón lives near the Spanish capital, Madrid, but did not attend the Goya awards ceremony in Granada.
Although the social media posts are thought to have destroyed her Oscar hopes, some have questioned the scale and ferocity of the backlash the actor faces.
In a column in El País on Wednesday, the writer and journalist Sergio del Molino argued that Gascón the actor, and Gascón the person ought to be considered separately, and that she shouldn’t be penalised come Oscar night.
“If the people at the Academy were convinced that Karla Sofía Gascón deserved an Oscar for her work on Emilia Pérez, there’s no reason why they should feel differently today,” he wrote. “No matter how idiotic, racist, insulting or in bad taste her tweets from years ago were, they were not part of her performance. And if they deemed that performance prize-worthy a week ago, they still should, because the film hasn’t changed.”
Another writer and journalist, Manuel Jabois, told Cadena Ser that “anyone who doesn’t feel a bit sorry for her has a problem”, while acknowledging that there was a debate to be had about how to separate Gascón’s “artistic talent from her disgusting and racist” opinions.
“And there’s another debate about how far the rejection, or cancellation – by Netflix, by colleagues, by the government of this country – can go,” said Jabois. “No matter how gross I find her 10-year-old opinions, I condemn the absurd cruelty and the absurd solitude to which she’s been condemned.”
With Agence France-Presse
Article by:Source: Staff and agencies
