Mexican Adriana Paz, best actress award at Cannes along with her co-stars for the narco-musical ‘Emilia Pérez’

The Mexican Adriana Paz, the Spanish Karla Sofía Gascón, the Dominican Zoe Saldaña and the American Selena Gómez have won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Festival for their participation in the film Emilia Perezby director Jacques Audiard, a co-production between Mexico and France, which also won the Jury Prize.

Overqualified and overexploited, Rita (Saldaña) uses her talents as a lawyer at the service of a large firm more inclined to launder criminals than to do justice. But an unexpected exit door opens for him, which helps the leader of the Manitas cartel (Gascón) to get out of the business and carry out the plan he has been secretly perfecting for years: finally become the woman he always dreamed of being, according to the synopsis tells.

The Cannes Festival jury, chaired by director Greta Gerwig, stated that they found it impossible to single out one of the actresses in Emilia Perez, “a story of women”, so it was decided to present a joint award in honor of that spirit. “They were all shining together and separating them undermined what they were creating. Each one stands out, but together they are transcendent,” said the director of Barbie.

“Is incredible. When I started in the business, in Mexico, there were many men in movies. We were wives, girlfriends, we moved among men, like puppets. Now that has changed, we have scenarios where women are the heroines, we tell different stories,” said Paz. In an interview with the middle elle a few days after the film’s presentation in Cannes.

Paz, 44 years old and originally from Mexico City, trained at the Theater College of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM. She has played her career primarily in film and television. She has more than 25 films between short films and feature films. She is the winner of three Ariel Awards for her performances in The tirisia (2015), Hilda (2016) and The charity (2017). She was also nominated for the Goya Award in 2017 for her performance in the film The author. The role that has given her the most fame and popularity is that of Altagracia, in the third and fourth seasons of the series. Vis a vis.

In Emilia Perez, Paz plays the girlfriend of capo Manitas, played by Gascón. “It is a film that talks about love and humanity. It is beyond gender. It’s about finding the person in yourself, that’s what makes it universal, that everyone can understand it. And of course, it is about hope, it is what keeps us alive,” said the Mexican actress for the same French magazine.

Audiard makes the leap from the black and white towers of the Parisian neighborhood in Olympics (2021) to the metropolis of Mexico City for his new film filmed in Spanish and partially in English. In this, her tenth feature film and sixth in competition at the event. The Croisette —where he won the Palme d’Or with Dheepan in 2015—, the filmmaker immersed himself in the ultraviolent world of Mexican drug traffickers, with a Latin-Spanish cast.

Audiard has had the collaboration of the great fashion company Saint Laurent, which co-produced and was in charge of the film’s costumes. The brand’s current creative director, Anthony Vaccarello, was also on board the project which has been described as a “musical melodrama.”

The Spanish transgender actress Karla Sofía Gascón collected the award this Saturday on behalf of her colleagues and co-stars and dedicated the award “to all trans people” who suffer and launched a speech against hate. “I want this award to have a special part for all those actors and actresses who work hard every day knocking on doors and they don’t open. Well, know that sometimes those doors open. As with Emilia Perez, we all have the opportunity to change, to be better people, so let’s see if you change, bastards,” he rebuked in reference to those who emit hatred against his group, in an improvised speech in which he combined French, English and Spanish.

Subscribe to the EL PAÍS Mexico newsletter and to whatsapp channel and receive all the key information on current events in this country.