There are 121,290 victims of enforced disappearance in Mexico, according to the National Registry of Missing Persons (RNPDNO). That number alone should be enough to shake us. To spark outrage, conversation, action—something beyond abstract sympathy. These stories need to be told, but when filmmakers choose to tell them, quality and care have to come before spectacle. Otherwise, whose pain are we really honouring?

I watched Emilia Pérez on New Year’s Eve, knowing very little about the production beyond its stunning trailer, which promised a visually spectacular experience. I didn’t find the film quite as groundbreaking as those teasers suggested, but I enjoyed it. The musical format felt bold, even powerful in its approach to a human rights crisis that deserves attention.

I was especially happy to see a trans actress in the lead. But the deeper I sat with it, the more uncomfortable I became. The plot—a Mexican cartel lord who transitions into a woman and becomes an activist for justice—leans heavily on the tired trope of “transness as redemption.” Still, I tried to justify it to myself. At least the film was attempting to break boundaries, right?

And then I learned more.

When Research is Optional

Jacques Audiard, the French director behind Emilia Pérez, has publicly admitted he did minimal research on Mexico’s human rights crisis. His own words made it clear: the focus wasn’t justice—it was style. That hit hard, especially since I hadn’t done my research either. I hadn’t realised that this stylised retelling of Mexico’s trauma was made by someone so culturally removed from it—and worse, with so little care for the reality it claims to depict.

I’m not Mexican. I’m a white, Polish, cis woman living in the UK. My Spanish isn’t strong enough to critique accents in the film or subtle cultural inaccuracies. But some facts speak for themselves. Only one Mexican actor appears in a film about Mexico. The movie won’t even be released in Mexico until later this month. How can you tell a nation’s story without its people?

I recommend reading the piece by a Mexican critic who breaks this issue down further here. It’s important.

So now, how can I ethically review this film? How can any of us?

The human rights crisis at its centre is devastatingly real. But when the director admits the tragedy was secondary to the film’s aesthetic ambitions, what are we left with? Just a stylish thriller? A vibe?

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe Audiard wasn’t trying to make a political statement, just a gripping story. But when you’re drawing so heavily from the grief of a country not your own, you owe it something more. Care. Collaboration. An awareness that these aren’t abstract themes—they’re real people.

What Emilia Pérez does instead feels uncomfortably close to aesthetic colonialism: borrowing trauma for spectacle while keeping those most affected at arm’s length.

The Awards Machine and Ethical Blind Spots

And it’s not new. Hollywood has built its empire on stories stolen from marginalised cultures, polished up for Western consumption. So what do we, as critics, do with this? How do we engage ethically with work created in this way? Can we separate art from ethics when the art is about trauma?

I don’t think we can. Paraphrasing Deleuze and Guattari: we live in an ethico-aesthetic paradigm where politics, ethics, and art aren’t separate threads but tangled together. Pretending otherwise—especially with stories about human suffering—feels dishonest.

What makes this harder to swallow is the praise Emilia Pérez keeps receiving—most recently, a Golden Globe win for Best Comedy/Musical. The awards circuit seems completely detached from the question of how films are made. Yes, you can admire a film’s cinematic craft. But cinematic craft doesn’t exist in a vacuum, especially when it builds on someone else’s pain.

So what’s the solution?

Meeting Art as Difference, not Projection

It’s obvious, really: involve the people you’re depicting. Not as consultants after the script is already written, not for a press-friendly panel during awards season. Involve them from the ground up, at every stage of production. Make them co-authors of the story.

Would we accept a Russian director making a stylised musical about American school shootings, filmed entirely in Russia, with only one American actor? Would we call that ethical?

I’ll leave you with this quote from the critique I mentioned earlier: “Portraying the leader of a cartel as a redeemed character, as Audiard’s film does, conveys a powerful message. It suggests, perhaps unintentionally, that traffickers are just as human as anyone else, that they simply want to live their lives, that they are parents too, that they can be benefactors and good people.”

Yes, humanising people who do harm matters. But when we engage with stories from cultures not our own, we have to be careful. We will always be shaped by our own context—our own privilege, our own distance. But we can be honest about that. We can resist the urge to make difference feel familiar, to project our own moral frameworks onto other people’s pain.

And maybe, just maybe, sometimes the most ethical choice is to not tell someone else’s story.

These aren’t absolutes—just reflections. My attempt to figure out how to encounter art as difference, not projection. Because until we reckon with how deeply ingrained our Eurocentric gaze is—how it still echoes a patriarchal, colonial mindset—we will keep missing the point.