Sawt Falasteen - LA fires could boost US Oscar hopefuls: 'Emilia Perez' director

Jacques Audiard's surreal Spanish-language musical drama about a transgender Mexican drug baron, who tries to make amends for her violent past by helping trace people disappeared by cartels, is one of the favorites for Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards.

Starring singer-actress Selena Gomez, "Avatar" star Zoe Saldana and Spanish transgender actress Karla Sofia Gascon, the film, which won four Golden Globes and the runner-up prize in Cannes, is also tipped to garner acting and directing nods.

But in an interview with AFP in Bogota, Audiard said he expected Hollywood to "play it local" in the wake of the blazes which have killed at least 27 people and razed entire neighborhoods in America's entertainment capital.

Film and TV stars have been among those who lost their homes, including Anthony Hopkins, Billy Crystal, Jeff Bridges and Jamie Lee Curtis.

"I was thinking about that day the other day," Audiard, dubbed the Scorsese of French cinema for his gritty films about low-lifers and outsiders, said when asked about his prospects for taking home a statuette.

"I said to myself that given what happened in Los Angeles, with all the problems they must be having at the moment, they will have to, in my opinion, play it local."

"They (Americans) will have to reassert themselves and regain confidence, which they will probably do through their cinema industry," the 72-year-old filmmaker predicted.

After twice being postponed due to the Los Angeles fires the Oscar nominations will be announced online on Thursday.

Audiard, one of France's greatest living directors, has been in the running for an Academy Award before, with his bleak 2009 masterpiece "A Prophet", about a French-Arab youth rising through the criminal ranks in prison, winning a nomination for Best Foreign Film.

He has a history of making films in languages other than French, from "Dheepan," about three Sri Lankan refugees struggling to start over in a tough Parisian housing estate told mostly in Tamil, to his philosophical English-language Western "The Sisters Brothers" starring Joaquin Phoenix and Jake Gyllenhaal.

- A 'mongrel' film -

"Emilia Perez," the latest offering in his genre-hopping career, had been tipped for success but the last leg of its Oscars odyssey has been marred by the critical roasting it received in Mexico where it is due to open in theatres on Thursday.

The criticism revolves around the fact that the film features only one main Mexican actor (Adriana Paz), was mostly shot in French studios, and, above all, what some Mexicans see as its frivolous treatment of violence in a country where more than 450,000 people have been murdered in the past two decades and 100,000 others are missing.

Audiard, who was particularly moved by the story of 43 students missing, and believed massacred, in southern Mexico since 2014, said he spent more than four years doing research for "Emilia Perez."

But "at some point you have to stop doing research because...otherwise you end up doing a documentary."

He rejected criticism that the film misrepresented Mexico, saying some scenes in the film deliberately sought to "defy credulity" and that his goal was to tell stories that are "both local and universal."

"It's a Spanish-language film that was shot in Paris. It's a mongrel film," he defended.

"Emilia Perez" sees him again delve into the interior lives of drug traffickers, the subject of "A Prophet," but he denied being fascinated by the criminal underworld.

"I hate them," he said of traffickers, calling them "fascists" who undermined democracy.

His gruelling promotional campaign for "Emilia Perez" has repeatedly taken him back and forth across the Atlantic in recent months.

Last week, he attended the film's Mexican premiere before travelling to Colombia for the Bogota screening.

Audiard said he was exhausted, adding wryly: "I feel like I'm on a rock'n'roll tour."

V.Said--SF-PST