French director Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” first made waves among critics at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024, when it won multiple awards. It went on to receive 10 Golden Globe nominations, winning four, including best musical or comedy.

“It is so beautiful to see a movie that is cinema,” gushed Mexican director Guillermo del Toro. Another Mexican filmmaker, Issa López, who directed “True Detective: Night Country,” called it a “masterpiece,” adding that Audiard portrayed issues of gender and violence in Latin America “better than any Mexican facing this issue at this time.”

The film is a musical about a Mexican drug lord named Manitas del Monte, played by trans actress Karla Sofía Gascón. Del Monte hires a lawyer to facilitate her long-awaited gender transition. After her surgery, she fakes her death with her lawyer’s help and sends her wife, Jessi, played by Selena Gómez, and their children to Switzerland. Four years later, Manitas – now known as Emilia Pérez – tries to reunite with her family by posing as Manitas’ distant cousin.

So why is it bombing among Mexican moviegoers?

Modest research into a ‘modest’ language

As a scholar of gender and sexuality in Latin America, I study LGBTQ+ representation in media, particularly in Mexico. So it’s been interesting to follow the negative reaction to a film that critics claim has broken new ground in exploring themes of gender, sexuality and violence in Mexico.

Many of the film’s perceived errors seem self-inflicted.

Audiard admitted that he didn’t do much research on Mexico before and during the filming process. And even though he doesn’t speak Spanish, he chose to use a Spanish script and film the movie in Spanish.

The director told French media outlet Konbini that he chose to make the film in Spanish because it is a language “of modest countries, developing countries, of poor people and migrants.”

Not surprisingly, an early critique of the film centered on its Spanish: It uses some Mexican slang words, but they’re spoken in ways that sound unnatural to native speakers. Then there’s the film’s overreliance on clichés that border on racism, perhaps most egregiously when Emilia’s child sings that she smells of “mezcal and guacamole.”

Of course, an artist need not belong to a culture in order to depict or explore it in their work. Filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein and Luis Buñuel became renowned figures in Mexican cinema despite being born in Latvia and Spain, respectively.

When choosing to explore sensitive topics, however, it is important to take into account the perspective of those being portrayed, both for accuracy’s sake and as a form of respect. Take Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The director collaborated with members of the Osage nation to further the film’s historical and cultural accuracy.

Glossing over the nuance

“Emilia Pérez” centers on how violence stems from the corruption prevalent in Mexico. Multiple musical numbers denounce the collusion between authorities and criminals.

This is certainly true. But to many Mexicans, it feels like an oversimplification of the issue.

The film fails to acknowledge the confluence of factors behind the country’s violence, such as U.S. demand for illegal drugs stemming from its opioid crisis, or the role that American guns play in Mexico’s violence.

Professor and journalist Oswaldo Zavala, who has written extensively about Mexican cartels, argues that the film perpetuates the idea that Latin American countries are solely to blame for the violence of drug trafficking. Furthermore, Zavala contends that this perspective reinforces the narrative that the U.S.-Mexico border needs to be militarized.

The musical features few male characters; the ones who do appear are invariably violent, and this includes Manitas before undergoing their transition. The cruelty of Manitas contrasts with Emilia’s kindness: She helps the “madres buscadoras,” which are the Mexican collectives made up of mothers searching for missing loved ones presumed to be kidnapped or killed by organized crime. One of these collectives, Colectivo de Víctimas del 10 de Marzo, criticized the film for depicting groups like theirs as recipients of money from organized crime and beneficiaries of luxurious galas attended by politicians and celebrities.

The group’s leader, Delia Quiroa, announced that the group would send a letter to the academy to express its condemnation of the film.

Backlash on multiple fronts

These political and cultural blind spots have spurred a backlash among Mexican moviegoers.

When the movie premiered in Mexico in January 2025, it bombed at the box office, with some viewers demanding refunds. Mexico’s Federal Consumer Protection Agency had to intervene after the movie chain Cinépolis refused to honor its satisfaction-guarantee policy.

Mexican writer Jorge Volpi called the movie “one of the crudest and most deceitful films of the 21st century.”

Trans content creator Camila Aurora playfully parodied “Emilia Pérez” in her short film “Johanne Sacrebleu.” In scenes filled with stereotypical French symbols such as croissants and berets, it tells the story of an heiress who falls in love with a member of her family’s business rivals.

While some viewers have nonetheless praised “Emilia Pérez” for its nuanced portrayal of trans women and the casting of a trans actress, the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD described it as “a step backward for trans representation.”

One point of contention is the musical number Emilia sings, “medio ella, medio él,” or “half she, half he,” which insinuates that trans people are stuck between two genders. The movie also seems to portray the character’s transition as a tool for deception.

A social media viper pit

Meanwhile, Gascón’s historic nominations as the first trans actress recognized by the Oscars and other awards have been overshadowed by her controversial statements.

She made headlines when she accused associates of Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres of disparaging her work. Torres is also an Oscar nominee for best actress.

The latest controversy began in late January 2025 when Gascón’s old social media posts resurfaced. The now-deleted messages included attacks on Muslims in Spain and a post calling co-star Selena Gómez a “rich rat,” which Gascón has denied writing.

“Emilia Pérez” is limping into the Oscars. Netflix and Audiard have distanced themselves from Gascón to try to preserve the film’s prospects at the annual Academy Awards ceremony.

It could be too little too late.

How can universities build better relationships with the communities around them? Academia is increasingly considering this question. And finding innovative ways to demonstrate value and connect with wider society.

This was on my mind when I learnt about a fascinating collaboration between the police and aspiring, young filmmakers at the University of Sunderland, which shows the power of research as a tool for public good.

I work for Universal Impact, The Conversation’s commercial subsidiary, and we recently travelled to the northeast to give a training course to University of Sunderland researchers on how to identify, and communicate with, different audiences for their work.

Whenever we work with academics, I’m reminded of the quality and diversity of research taking place all around us – stretching, in this case, from preventing liver damage to boosting performance in modern pentathlon.

After the course, we built on the training with a mentoring programme for a group of researchers including Adelle Hulsmeier, who leads the university’s screen performance BA programme.

I’m a bit of a movie buff. So I was interested to learn about the unique initiative Adelle runs, bringing together young people and police around an unexpected common ground – film.

Here’s how it works. Northumberland Police suggests themes, students make short films inspired by those themes, and the films are then used as education and training resources.

Like many of my favourite directors, Adelle believes it’s possible to address some of the most pressing social issues through storytelling.

A new approach

The project comes as public trust in the police is in decline, particularly among members of Gen Z (broadly, those born between 1996 and 2010).

Children and young people are also disproportionately affected by crime, often as victims of the most serious offences. But these films offer an opportunity to change the narrative.

And as the Labour government is proposing “respect orders” to address the UK’s 6.7 million annual offences — which cost taxpayers £58.9 billion in 2023-24 — this novel approach seems particularly timely.

Over the past 11 years, more than 1,000 students have worked on at least 50 films, covering topics such as sexual exploitation, domestic violence, male rape and “county lines” drugs trafficking.

The films’ influence extends far beyond the university. They have been integrated into training programmes for police officers, healthcare workers, teachers and other professionals.

Community engagement

The collaboration was born of a desire to make issues of crime and policing widely accessible, with Adelle striving to bridge the gap between academic learning and societal impact.

In 2019, the project received the Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence from Advance Higher Education, recognising the initiative’s outstanding contribution to education and community engagement.

The programme has also been praised by former Labour MP and Victims’ Commissioner Dame Vera Baird, who described the films as an effective way for the police to “transmit messages in a way that we cannot”.

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Meanwhile, the project is also an opportunity for students to develop critical skills and gain invaluable industry experience.

By empowering students to tackle real world social issues, the University of Sunderland is not only preparing them for the future but also helping to shape a safer, more empathetic world.

This partnership is a testament to the mutual benefits that come from universities and public sector organisations working collectively towards common goals that support their local communities.

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At Universal Impact, we offer specialist training, mentoring and research communication services – donating profits back to The Conversation, our parent charity. If you’re a researcher or research institution and you’re interested in working together, please get in touch – or subscribe to our weekly newsletter to find out more.

Type text into AI image and video generators, and you’ll often see outputs of unusual, sometimes creepy, pictures.

In a way, this is a feature, not a bug, of generative AI. And artists are wielding this aesthetic to create a new storytelling art form.

The tools, such as Midjourney to generate images, Runway and Sora to produce videos, and Luma AI to create 3D objects, are relatively cheap or free to use. They allow filmmakers without access to major studio budgets or soundstages to make imaginative short films for the price of a monthly subscription.

I’ve studied these new works as the co-director of the AI for Media & Storytelling studio at the University of Southern California.

Surveying the increasingly captivating output of artists from around the world, I partnered with curators Jonathan Wells and Meg Grey Wells to produce the Flux Festival, a four-day showcase of experiments in AI filmmaking, in November 2024.

While this work remains dizzyingly eclectic in its stylistic diversity, I would argue that it offers traces of insight into our contemporary world. I’m reminded that in both literary and film studies, scholars believe that as cultures shift, so do the way we tell stories.

With this cultural connection in mind, I see five visual trends emerging in film.

1. Morphing, blurring imagery

In her “NanoFictions” series, the French artist Karoline Georges creates portraits of transformation. In one short, “The Beast,” a burly man mutates from a two-legged human into a hunched, skeletal cat, before morphing into a snarling wolf.

The metaphor – man is a monster – is clear. But what’s more compelling is the thrilling fluidity of transformation. There’s a giddy pleasure in seeing the figure’s seamless evolution that speaks to a very contemporary sensibility of shapeshifting across our many digital selves.

This sense of transformation continues in the use of blurry imagery that, in the hands of some artists, becomes an aesthetic feature rather than a vexing problem.

Theo Lindquist’s “Electronic Dance Experiment #3,” for example, begins as a series of rapid-fire shots showing flashes of nude bodies in a soft smear of pastel colors that pulse and throb. Gradually it becomes clear that this strange fluidity of flesh is a dance. But the abstraction in the blur offers its own unique pleasure; the image can be felt as much as it can be seen.

2. The surreal

Thousands of TikTok videos demonstrate how cringey AI images can get, but artists can wield that weirdness and craft it into something transformative. The Singaporean artist known as Niceaunties creates videos that feature older women and cats, riffing on the concept of the “auntie” from Southeast and East Asian cultures.

In one recent video, the aunties let loose clouds of powerful hairspray to hold up impossible towers of hair in a sequence that grows increasingly ridiculous. Even as they’re playful and poignant, the videos created by Niceaunties can pack a political punch. They comment on assumptions about gender and age, for example, while also tackling contemporary issues such as pollution.

On the darker side, in a music video titled “Forest Never Sleeps,” the artist known as Doopiidoo offers up hybrid octopus-women, guitar-playing rats, rooster-pigs and a wood-chopping ostrich-man. The visual chaos is a sweet match for the accompanying death metal music, with surrealism returning as a powerful form.

3. Dark tales

The often-eerie vibe of so much AI-generated imagery works well for chronicling contemporary ills, a fact that several filmmakers use to unexpected effect.

In “La Fenêtre,” Lucas Ortiz Estefanell of the AI agency SpecialGuestX pairs diverse image sequences of people and places with a contemplative voice-over to ponder ideas of reality, privacy and the lives of artificially generated people. At the same time, he wonders about the strong desire to create these synthetic worlds. “When I first watched this video,” recalls the narrator, “the meaning of the image ceased to make sense.”

In the music video titled “Closer,” based on a song by Iceboy Violet and nueen, filmmaker Mau Morgó captures the world-weary exhaustion of Gen Z through dozens of youthful characters slumbering, often under the green glow of video screens. The snapshot of a generation that has come of age in the era of social media and now artificial intelligence, pictured here with phones clutched close to their bodies as they murmur in their sleep, feels quietly wrenching.

4. Nostalgia

Sometimes filmmakers turn to AI to capture the past.

Rome-based filmmaker Andrea Ciulu uses AI to reimagine 1980s East Coast hip-hop culture in “On These Streets,” which depicts the city’s expanse and energy through breakdancing as kids run through alleys and then spin magically up into the air.

Ciulu says that he wanted to capture New York’s urban milieu, all of which he experienced at a distance, from Italy, as a kid. The video thus evokes a sense of nostalgia for a mythic time and place to create a memory that is also hallucinatory.

Similarly, David Slade’s “Shadow Rabbit” borrows black-and-white imagery reminiscent of the 1950s to show small children discovering miniature animals crawling about on their hands. In just a few seconds, Slade depicts the enchanting imagination of children and links it to generated imagery, underscoring AI’s capacities for creating fanciful worlds.

5. New times, new spaces

In his video for the song “The Hardest Part” by Washed Out, filmmaker Paul Trillo creates an infinite zoom that follows a group of characters down the seemingly endless aisle of a school bus, through the high school cafeteria and out onto the highway at night. The video perfectly captures the zoominess of time and the collapse of space for someone young and in love haplessly careening through the world.

The freewheeling camera also characterizes the work of Montreal-based duo Vallée Duhamel, whose music video “The Pulse Within” spins and twirls, careening up and around characters who are cut loose from the laws of gravity.

In both music videos, viewers experience time and space as a dazzling, topsy-turvy vortex where the rules of traditional time and space no longer apply.

Right now, in a world where algorithms increasingly shape everyday life, many works of art are beginning to reflect how intertwined we’ve become with computational systems.

What if machines are suggesting new ways to see ourselves, as much as we’re teaching them to see like humans?