Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón was, as expected, not in attendance at this evening’s Goya Awards in Spain, but was clearly on the minds of some folks who were. When accepting the Goya for Best European Film (the only prize for which Emilia Pérez was nominated) representatives from the movie’s Spanish distributors gave a shoutout to the actress, which was met with cheers and applause from the audience at the ceremony in Granada. “In the face of hatred and ridicule,” they called for “more cinema, more culture.”
Earlier, on the sidelines of the ceremony, Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona, who was a member of the Cannes jury which awarded the Best Actress prize to the film’s four female leads, including Gascón, last May, commented, “Everything that is happening with Emilia Pérez makes me sad because there is a great film behind it.”
He was referring to the fallout from Gascón’s racist and Islamophobic social media comments and told El Pais, “Karla Sofía Gascón has made a mistake and her messages are inexcusable. She was surely not prepared to live through everything she has lived through and in such a short time she was not well advised. But in the end, if it is about defending tolerance, tolerance also goes hand in hand with compassion. I think that there is a lynching around Karla Sofía Gascón… and we have to put a little bit of a stop and also think about the film and all the people who have worked on that film.”
MORE…
