We Can Critique Emilia Pérez & Celebrate Latina Wins at the 2025 Golden Globes

The 2025 Golden Globes felt like it was more Latine than ever. Of course, Emilia Pérez was one of the big reasons why. The French flick (I’ll get to that later) led the nominations with 10 nods going in and won the most of any film with four statues, including for best foreign-language motion picture, best supporting actress in a musical/comedy for Zoe Saldaña, best original song, and best musical/comedy movie.

That meant plenty of opportunities for the Emilia Pérez team to take the stage, revealing its beauty and its oddities. Saldaña won the first award of the night and delivered a tear-jerker of an acceptance speech. Shimmering in black, she spoke in English and Spanish, telling the world what this award meant to her. “This is a first time for me, and I’m so just blessed that I’m sharing this moment with Selena and Karla and Jacques and all of my fellow nominees. I’m in awe of you — your strength, your complexity, your undeniable talent,” the Dominican and Puerto Rican actor said. “I know it’s a competition, but all that I have witnessed is just us showing up for each other and celebrating each other and it’s just so beautiful.” Known for her blockbusters (Avatar, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Star Trek), Saldaña, who is the first Dominican-American to win the award, is finally being appreciated for her craft.

Certainly as Rita, the overworked, brilliant attorney about to get a big break thanks to the titular Emilia Pérez, Saldaña shines. As Rita, she sings, she dances, and she acts, inhabiting a character that goes through multiple metamorphoses over the course of the film (and does so in the supporting role). Her best scene is “El Mal,” where she lampoons Mexico’s rich, revealing their hypocrisies from her position as both an insider and outsider. It’s brilliant, mostly thanks to Saldaña’s scathing physicality in her performance and the way the camera, lights, and staging frame her work.

“El Mal” won for best original song, and while Saldaña got up on stage to stand with the team, two white French songwriters accepted the awards. When Emilia Pérez won other big categories, French writer/director Jacques Audiard accepted.

This is because, as many of us Latines already know, Emilia Pérez isn’t a Latine film at all. It’s a white, French, straight guy’s fantasy of what it is to be a trans Mexican woman. They filmed in France, using Mexico as inspiration but not fact. The result is a wild ride of a movie that gives meaty parts to Latina actors like Saldaña, Selena Gomez (regardless of what you think of her Spanish), and Adriana Paz. But it doesn’t have anything to say about what it means to be Mexican specifically or Latina more broadly. Arguably, it does even worse for trans folks, reducing them to their body parts. Regardless, here’s a film that’s innovative in its form — how it interweaves song, dance, and melodrama — but fails to extend that innovation to its actual subjects, relying instead on a set of tired (and arguably dangerous) cliches to develop its characters. It’s a film where the drug trade is synonymous with life in Mexico and anatomy is paramount to the trans experience.

Still, it was great to see Saldaña win.

And it was satisfying for the camera to spend so much time with her and other Latinas at the Emilia Pérez table. The Globes have their issues — so much so that they went off the air a few years back and restructured their entire entity — but it was still satisfying to see so many Latines there after years of Hollywood ignoring us.

In an upset, Brazilian Fernanda Torres won Best Lead Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama for her arresting portrayal in I’m Still Here. Based on a true story, the film follows Eunice Paiva, a mother and activist resisting Brazil’s military dictatorship and the disappearances that went with it in the 1970s. She was phenomenal in the role and dedicated her award to her mother Fernanda Montenegro, the last Brazilian woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe. “You have no idea. She was here 25 years ago. And this is like a proof that art can endure through life, even in difficult moments like this,” Torres shared. “This is a film that helps us to think how to survive in tough times.” Her mother was also nominated for an Oscar but didn’t win, so perhaps Torres can repeat her acceptance performance on that bigger and more prestigious stage later this year.

Seeing Latinas win these awards felt great, especially as they were surrounded by a bunch of other Latine nominees, presenters, and talent. In the first third of the show, nearly every category somehow featured a member of our community. There was Puerto Rican Anthony Ramos doing a fun bit with Kathy Bates. There was Mexican Diego Luna getting a nod for his comedic chops in La Máquina. There was part-Puerto Rican Auliʻi Cravalho presenting the first award. There was host Nikki Glaser teasing Gomez’s choice of fiance Benny Blanco.

And while our ubiquity waned in the middle, by the end, we were everywhere again, thanks to Mexican Salma Hayek and Belizean-Guatemalan Colman Domingo presenting, Colombian Sofía Vergara hamming up her loss, and Torres’ big win.

It this sense, it felt like a good night to be Latine, with plenty of our talent on display. Thankfully, we weren’t alone, with Shōgun sweeping all of its categories, Ali Wong taking it for best stand-up performance, and women above the age of 50 doing particularly well. I mean, Demi Moore arguably gave the best speech of the night.

Of course, there were some disappointments. Saldaña was the only Black person to accept an award. Domingo was nominated for his outstanding turn in Sing Sing but didn’t win. Quinta Brunson and Abbott Elementary lost to Hacks everywhere they faced up. Boricua Liza Colon-Zayas didn’t take the stage. And for mind-boggling reasons, the Globes producers had Meryl Streep present Viola Davis with the Cecil B. DeMille award at a previous, untelevised event.

It was also frustrating to see how the Globes handled True Detective: Night Country. Mexican Issa López revamped the HBO series, putting missing and murdered Indigenous women at its center and cast Jodie Foster and Wampanoag actor Kali Reis in the lead roles. Yet only Foster got a Globe last night, despite López and Reis being nominated, in a move that recognized the show while going against what it stands for.

Still, overall, Latinas fared better than usual at the 82nd Golden Globes, even if only two took home awards. Throughout the night, Latines of various races, cultures, and sexualities were visible for once. And while still imperfect, it was certainly progress — or something like it.