In Emilia Pérez, director Jacques Audiard has made something unique — a musical about a trans-Mexican cartel boss who leaves the criminal life to set up an NGO to locate thousands of Mexico’s “disappeared”. If that sounds ambitious, it’s just another project for Audiard, who won the Palme d’Or for his 2015 film Dheepan, which he made entirely through Tamil, a language he does not speak. In fact, making films far from his native France and in languages that aren’t his own has become Audiard’s thing in recent years, with a filmography that includes 2018’s The Sisters Brothers, set in the American West and shot in English, and now Emilia Pérez, based in Mexico and spoken, and sung, in Spanish.

Emilia Pérez was rapturously received at 2024’s Cannes Film Festival with Audiard winning the Jury Prize, and Clément Ducol and Camille winning the Soundtrack Award. In a rare occurence, the film’s four female leads; Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz and Zoe Saldaña, also jointly won Best Actress. In the conversation below, we caught up with Audiard to discuss his ambitious new film which is already being hailed as one of the best of the year.

Barry Pierce: Emilia Pérez started life as the libretto to an opera that was never made. What drew you to want to make this story an opera, initially?
Jacques Audiard: I’ve always wanted to tackle opera. Since I made A Self-Made Hero with Alexandre Desplat, we’d discussed potentially exploring that genre. The last four films I’ve made were in different languages that I do not speak, so I suppose I have to accept that I like the musicality of language. The exploration of musicality is what naturally led me to opera.

BP: We don’t have an opera but we do have a musical. Have you always wanted to make a musical?
JA: No, that’s why it wasn’t such a clear idea for me and that’s why I did this detour via opera. If I’m perfectly honest, it’s a genre I don’t know and don’t particularly like.

BP: Interesting. So you’re not a fan of musicals?
JA: It’s not to say that there aren’t films that are musicals that I like, such as Cabaret or Hair or The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but that’s mainly because they have a political angle to them. They have a serious side – I basically like musicals that aren’t musical comedies. 

BP: You mentioned that your last few films you’ve made in different languages and now you’ve made a musical when you don’t like musicals, it feels like you like to make things difficult for yourself.
JA: Perhaps you’re right. These films are difficult to make. I could make easy films but these films pique my interest and curiosity. The fact that I’m going into these complicated films addresses questions that I didn’t know I had to answer and it allows me to explore those answers. I like cinema too much to make all my films identical.

“I like to have a rainbow of women, and I mean that in every sense”

BP: With Emilia Pérez, it’s a story of transness and Mexican cartels and the one hundred thousand people who have been declared missing in Mexico. Why make this film now? Why tackle all of these very topical subjects in one go?
JA: I like to work with the times I am living in. For example, I couldn’t make A Prophet now. Even though the subjects we tackled in A Prophet are still there, the problems of racism in the prison system, it’s more that there are topics that are contemporary to me that resonate with me.

BP: Were you apprehensive about making a film based on a trans character? I don’t know how it is in France, but in Britain, trans people have repeatedly been vilified by the far right in mainstream media.
JA: It’s the same in France.

BP: So, you weren’t worried that you could be provoking the far right?
JA: Maybe there’s a certain naivety to the film, maybe there’s a certain clumsiness to the film. The fact that it’s all singing, all dancing, might make those that have issues with that subject accept it more, understand it more, perhaps.

BP: What I liked so much about the film is how irreverent it is. The whole sequence where Emilia medically transitions is a huge and hilarious musical number with people chanting and a chorus of bandaged patients. It’s a fun way of approaching a topic that is, usually, taken very seriously.
JA: It has to be, in a way, because the subject is so painful that if you were to be too on the nose about it you’d end up making this very serious documentary. Whereas tackling it from that fairly naive and lively angle allows it to reach people in a more iconoclastic, and more direct, way. If nothing else, it means that it allowed me to centre and platform an extraordinary 52-year-old transwoman actress and a 45-year-old Black actress who, throughout her Hollywood career, wasn’t cast in very serious roles. She wasn’t allowed to embrace her identity as a Black actress and now this film allows her to do so. 

BP: Karla Sofía’s performance in the film is amazing. And I know she had not made a film of this scale before.
JA: She was just not given that chance to explore something that was so true to her. She was always cast as characters who were far away from who she truly is. This was her opportunity to perform, really, two different roles. First, a man who she could have been in another life (well, I hope she wouldn’t have been like that) but she had that chance to experiment with those identities and perform them and eventually, like a butterfly, the actress Karla Sofía emerges on the other side. With actors, you don’t just act for a paycheck, you act to make your life make more sense. 

BP: Where did you find Karla Sofía?
JA: I was introduced to her by a friend who knew the Spanish musical scene. I initially saw photos of her and talked with her on Zoom but it was only when we met in real life that it was a certainty that she would embody Emilia Pérez. And I should add, I met Zoe and Karla Sofía at the same time, and their characters in the script were initially much younger. They were in their 20s and 30s. But when I met both actresses, both of whom were much older than their characters, it made sense to me to adapt the characters to suit them. That happens very rarely. 

BP: It’s true that there is a lot more trans representation in cinema now but it’s rare to see the focus on someone who transitioned later in life.
JA: That’s very true. When I was developing the story it didn’t make any sense for them to be young. It’s going to sound pejorative, but I wanted mature women who could bring all their experience with them. I like to have a rainbow of women, and I mean that in every sense. When you see Adriana Paz, also a woman in her 40s, you can sense her whole history, you know that this is a real woman with a past. 

“I like to work with the times I am living in”

BP: We have yet to discuss the fact that Selena Gomez is in this film.
JA: Funny that you mention her because she’s the only character who doesn’t change. She remains a child-like woman going from one situation to another without evolving. 

BP: Were you a big Selena Gomez fan?
JA: I didn’t follow her career very closely but I had seen her in Harmony Korine’s film [Spring Breakers] and Woody Allen’s film [A Rainy Day in New York]. But really the moment I chose to cast her was when we met in this café in New York and I was completely charmed. She didn’t even believe me when I said “I want to work with you.” Even when we called after the meeting she said, “Oh I thought you’d forget about me.” Even Zoe Saldaña, I had only really seen her in Avatar so the character she embodies is very different to anything I’d seen her in before. 

BP: Yes, it was so nice to see Zoe not playing some kind of alien.
JA: [Laughs] I think she was very pleased about that too.

BP: Halfway through Emilia Pérez, the film makes a tonal shift and it becomes about the well-reported disappearances that have plagued Mexico for years. As a Frenchman, why did you become so interested in this specific issue in a country far from your own?
JA: It’s more a universal principle, it’s the disappearance of democracy that I find intolerable. Every year you have about 3,000 people who go missing, even just a few weeks ago where 25 people were massacred. There are whole regions of Mexico that you can’t go to, you can’t access, because of drug trafficking and corruption. If there’s something that touches you and you want to speak about it, you may as well tackle it. 

BP: And, ultimately, it is a very operatic story. It’s so vast, you have your divas, it all ends in tragedy…
JA: Exactly, I agree.

Emilia Pérez is out on Netflix today