Virginia Film Festival

Official Oscar^© Selection—France
Jury Prize and Best Actress Winner, Cannes Film Festival

Renegade French auteur Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, A Prophet) offers up his most ambitious film to date—an audacious musical fever dream that defies genre and expectation, as it tracks the lives of four remarkable women in Mexico.

The story centers on high-powered lawyer Rita (Zoe Saldaña) who takes on an unexpected assignment: helping Emilia, a Mexican cartel leader (Karla Sofìa Gascón) fake their death and undergo gender-affirmation surgery. Rita’s meticulous planning ensures the daring plan is a success, but Emilia can’t stand to be away from her wife Jessi (Selena Gomez) and their kids. When Emilia decides to return to Mexico assuming a hidden identity, everyone’s lives are turned upside down.

The wild, frenetic, and darkly humorous film is part crime-drama and part dazzling musical, with a healthy dash of soap opera styling thrown in for good measure. Career-definining performances from Saldana, Gomez, and Adriana Paz power the film, but its beating heart is unequivocally Karla Sofía Gascón, whose star turn lead her to become the first openly trans actor to win a major award at the Cannes film festival.

“With Emilia Pérez, [Audiard] has made something fresh, full of vitality and affecting, held aloft by its own quietly soaring power.”
-David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

Supported by Out and About and QVA: University of Virginia’s Queer Alumni Network.