Why Spanish Speakers Are Furious About Emilia Perez Winning The Best Song Oscar

The Oscars are the time where the entire film industry comes together to celebrate cinema, to pay homage to the people making your favorite movies, to do silly little comedy routines in-between awards. But they are also where Hollywood gets to showcase how out of tune it is with the general public, rewarding movies that are controversial at best, and despised at worst.

In 2025, the big controversial Oscar favorite was "Emilia Pérez," a horrendously bad crime musical about a Mexican lawyer who helps a sadistic murderer of a Mexican cartel boss transition into a woman, evading punishment for her crimes by faking her death and assuming a new identity. The film initially premiered at the Cannes Film Festival — an event notorious for ignoring controversies around the filmmakers whose movies they screen, and for awarding highly contentious movies. In 2024 the Jury Prize went to "Emilia Pérez," a movie that, at the time, got generally positive reviews from critics attending the prestigious festival. Perhaps this was due to festival bias, the intoxicating glamour of Cannes, the Aperol Spritz drank moments before the screening, or just highly dubious taste. By comparison, /Film's own Jeremy Mathai was less generous in his review, calling it a "half-completed thought experiment."

Regardless of the initial response by the mostly white critics at Cannes, upon its wider release it quickly became apparent that general audiences — particularly queer audiences, people from Mexico, and Spanish speakers in general — not only disliked the film: they absolutely loathed it. Beyond being a rather misguided attempt at a trans story, "Emilia Pérez" became a symbol of performative representation: Mexican struggles and culture getting exploited for the amusement of non-Mexicans (there are virtually no Mexican people involved in the movie). In retaliation for "Emilia Pérez," Mexican filmmaker Camila Aurora created the musical short "Johanne Sacreblu," a masterclass in the art of a parody.

Thankfully, with the 2025 Oscars now officially over, Spanish speakers' year-long nightmare should finally be done, as we no longer have to talk or think about "Emilia Pérez." Still, there was one final insulting gift during the ceremony right before "Emilia Pérez" won Best Original Song.

As Mick Jagger presented the nominees for Best Original Song, audiences saw clips of each nominated song accompanied by a short speech by the songwriter explaining what made their work special or what they particularly enjoyed about the process. During the clip for "Mi Camino," one of two "Emilia Pérez" songs nominated for the award, French singer-songwriter Camille casually mentioned her admiration for the Spanish language. "Spanish is such a great language for pop music."

Yes, that was the extent of it, nothing more. Here is a French songwriter with zero ties to a Spanish-speaking country, no knowledge of the language that she's speaking of, only mentioning the language in which the songs are written. When Camille and Clément Ducol took the stage after winning the award for their song "El Mal," there was zero mention of Mexico, of the Spanish language: nothing. They attempted to talk about the "importance" of their song in denouncing corruption and about their hope that art can be "a force of the good and progress in the world."

Immediately, the response turned hostile. There were many online who took to mock Camille for her rather atrocious attempt to have the Oscars audience join her in singing an impromptu song (few joined, and they were played off the stage). And there was also outrage over the song winning despite, well, being horribly written and obviously a work by someone who does not know the language they're writing in.

From the moment clips from "Emilia Pérez" started surfacing online, there was a widespread outrage and vitriol for the songs, which clearly sound like they were written by someone who does not know Spanish and didn't seek help from someone who does. There is a constant use of lyrics that sound like they were written using Google translate, and others that simply make no sense even in context. "Bienvenida," a song performed by Selena Gomez in the film, repeatedly misuses certain words and phrases. Even if that wasn't the song that ended up winning the Oscar, many see the mere fact that the movie won an award for its songwriting to be insulting.

At every turn, the filmmakers and people involved with "Emilia Pérez" have at best ignored the controversy surrounding the movie, and at worst made condescending remarks that earned the ire of Spanish-speakers everywhere. First, there was an interview where director Jacques Audiard said he didn't feel the need to do any research into Mexico, its culture, or even its history dealing with drug cartels, which sparked outrage from audiences who felt that the director was just exploiting real-life tragedies for visual flavor.

More recently, Audiard made things worse by giving the metaphorical middle finger to an estimated 600 million people in the world by saying Spanish is a language of "the poor and migrants." At every turn, rather than simply acknowledge the criticisms and the way Mexican audiences have been hurt by this production, the people involved with "Emilia Pérez" have gone on the defensive and made things worse.

Right after winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, Zoe Saldaña responded to criticisms from a Mexican journalist saying the film was "really hurtful for us Mexicans" by declaring that "the heart of this movie was not Mexico." According to Saldaña, the film is just a universal story of friendship, and the setting is just window dressing. This came minutes after Saldaña made a passionate speech about representation and being a child of Spanish-speaking immigrants.

"Emilia Pérez" has achieved something rare. It has united Latinos everywhere in the common cause of hating this poor, insulting, racist representation of Mexico and of the Spanish language that somehow was awarded for its wordsmanship in that same language. At the very least, now that awards are over, this movie can go the way of so many Oscar winners that no one remembers.