‘I’m Still Here’ overtakes ‘Emilia Pérez’ in key Oscar race amid Karla Sofía Gascón chaos
The 2025 Oscar race for Best International Film has been turned upside down.
Following a wild week in which Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón delivered several apologies and broke down during interviews after her offensive social media posts from the past resurfaced, the Netflix musical film from France has been dethroned by Brazil’s entry, I’m Still Here, in the international feature category. Emilia Pérez had been considered the prohibitive favorite in this race and just captured the equivalent Golden Globe a month ago.
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Emilia Pérez received 13 total Oscar nominations, the most ever for a non-English-language movie. Besides international feature, Emilia Pérez is also up for picture, director (Jacques Audiard), actress (Gascón), supporting actress (Zoe Salda?a), adapted screenplay, film editing, cinematography, makeup and hairstyling, score, sound, and song (both “El Mal” and “Mi Camino”).
Gascón plays Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, a drug kingpin who undergoes gender-affirming surgery with the aid of a struggling lawyer (Salda?a). Following her transformation into the stunning Emilia, she attempts to discreetly connect with her children and former wife (Selena Gomez), all of whom believe Manitas is deceased.
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I’m Still Here is up for three Oscars: picture, actor (Fernanda Torres), and international feature. Torres won the Golden Globe in Best Drama Actress for portraying real-life activist Eunice Paiva, who goes to extreme lengths to try to find her husband after his forced disappearance by the Brazilian dictatorship.
Torres has also come under scrutiny in recent weeks. She apologized for wearing blackface in a TV comedy sketch from 2008 after that clip was recirculated on social media. Gascón also accused “people working with” Torres of attacks, though she later clarified that remark by saying Torres has been a “wonderful ally.”
After the Oscar nominations were announced on Jan. 23, Emilia Pérez shot to No. 1 in Gold Derby’s rankings for Best International Film. It was officially overtaken by I’m Still Here on Wednesday. The other three nominees, in descending order based on our Oscar odds, are The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany), Flow (Latvia), and The Girl with the Needle (Denmark).
Gascón’s messy week has had repercussions on other Oscar categories, including Best Picture, where Emilia Pérez tumbled from second to fourth; Best Director, where Audiard dropped from second to third; and Best Adapted Screenplay, which also went from second to third.
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