Emilia Pérez

A Mexican cartel boss transitions and attempts to atone by finding the country’s disappeared. Jacques Audiard shot it on a Paris soundstage with a mostly non-Mexican cast, and it went from a Cannes prize and an enormous Oscar campaign to one of the most comprehensively rejected awards films in years.

The objections are worth knowing: Mexican critics on the depiction of a country the film barely visited, trans writers on a script that treats transition as a moral do-over, and everyone on the songs. Karla Sofía Gascón’s nomination was historic and the surrounding mess overshadowed it entirely. Watch it to have the argument first-hand.