Winner of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival Jury Grand Prix, The Prophet mixes the French ethnic cauldron, including criticism of how immigrants are treated by government and politics, with a more action and violence-driven approach. A realistic and true view of what happens in Europe, leaving us claustrophobic within the prison where much of the story takes place. Named one of the 100 best films of the century by The New York Times.
Emilia Pérez is a film that has sparked controversy for various reasons. Among them: being a production set in Mexico but written and directed by the French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, with actresses who speak Spanish but are not Mexican (Spanish actress Karla Sofia Gascón and Americans Zoë Saldaña and Selena Gomez, with particular criticism directed at the latter), and most importantly, superficially addressing issues such as the trans experience and the crisis of the disappeared in Mexico, both central to its plot. The film tells the story of a trans drug trafficker, initially known as "El Manitas" (Gascón), who kidnaps a lawyer (Saldaña) to help her with a singular purpose: to fake her death and transition to start anew. Years later, now as Emilia Pérez, she returns to Mexico to try to be near her children and ex (Gomez), while also becoming an activist for the disappeared victims of the drug cartel. The film has its positive aspects, such as the cinematography and Saldaña's performance, but it's important to note its shallow approach to the social context, which it instrumentalizes and trivializes to tell a redemption story that, in strictly dramatic terms, is not well developed. It is worth watching and reflecting on it, on European representation models of other countries' realities, and on how it perpetuates a binary exoticism both towards Latin America and the trans community.