As we enter into the last few months of the year, Netflix enters its Oscar phase, where many of its big original movie premieres are the streamer’s most likeliest contenders for year end awards, most notably the Oscars. This year perhaps the odds on favorite to land some Oscar nominations is Emilia Perez, the crime musical that stars Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez and Karla Sofia Gascon, which is now streaming on Netflix worldwide after its Oscar qualifying run in US movie theaters.
Emilia Perez hails from acclaimed French director Jacques Audiard (The Prophet, Rust and Bone), based on the novel Ecoute by Boris Razon. The movie follows four women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness, including Emilia Perez (Gascon), a former drug lord that faked her own death in order to live as her authentic self, and Rita (Saldana), the lawyer that helped her pull it off. Gomez, Adriana Paz and Edgar Ramirez also star.
The movie is critically acclaimed (“Certified Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes at 82%), has already won some impressive hardware (Audiard and the quartet of actresses in the movie were feted at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival) and is expected to be a competitor in a lot of races at the Oscars, including Best Picture, Director, Actress (Gascon), Supporting Actress (Saldana, Gomez) and more.
The movie also has the chance to continue Netflix’s streak of having a movie nominated for Best International Feature Film (formerly Best Foreign language Film), which the streamer has nabbed in three consecutive years (and five of the last seven years), as Emilia Perez is France’s official selection for the award this year. If it won it would be the third Netflix movie in seven years to win the Oscar in this category, following Roma and All Quiet on the Western Front.
With all the buzz surrounding the movie, Emilia Perez could be the next big hit on Netflix, a subscribers have shown that they’re not opposed to foreign language movies on the streamer, even foreign language musicals (RRR was a big hit on Netflix). I’m certainly one subscriber who will be watching the movie as soon as I can, having missed it in its theatrical run up thus far.
This is just the start of Netflix’s Oscar push, as over the next couple of weeks it is set to premiere The Piano Lesson with John David Washington, animated contender Spellbound, Bill Nighy’s Joy and Tyler Perry’s The Six Triple Eight. There are also a number of Netflix movies from earlier this year that could be up for some Oscar consideration, including Hit Man and Mountain Queen.
To watch Emilia Perez, or any of these movies, you must have a Netflix subscription. You can watch the Emilia Perez trailer, though, right here: