‘Emilia Pérez’ is a divisive Oscars frontrunner. It’s also the subject of a new parody film.

Netflix’s Emilia Pérez is one of the most divisive contenders in this year’s Oscar race. The film racked up a historic 13 nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, making it the most-nominated foreign-language film in Oscar history. Its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, also became the first openly trans actress to be nominated for an Academy Award. While these accomplishments may be cause for celebration, the film hasn’t received a warm reception from the LGBTQ and Mexican communities.

On Jan. 25, a trans content creator named Camila Aurora uploaded her parody of Emilia Pérez, called Johanne Sacreblu on YouTube. The 28-minute short is a spoof of the significant problems critics have with the Oscars frontrunner, directed by French filmmaker Jacques Audiard, which mainly have to do with the lack of Mexican actors in the movie, its “inauthentic” depiction of Mexican and trans people, and the movie not being filmed in Mexico. Aurora is among those critics.

Flipping the script, Johanne Sacreblu plays on stereotypes about France and French people, but it was filmed entirely in Mexico with all Mexican actors.

The story follows the titular trans character Johanne Sacreblu as she is set to inherit the biggest baguette company in the world but falls in love with her rival, a trans heir to a croissant fortune named Agtugo Ratatouille — an apparent reference to the 2007 animated Disney film. The parody draws on over-the-top stereotypes of French people, complete with curled mustaches, black-and-white striped shirts and red berets.

Johanne Sacreblu had over 1.8 million views on YouTube as of Thursday morning, and over 30,000 people logged as having seen it on Letterboxd.

“The best thing about Johanne Sacreblu is not that it’s a parody of Emilia Pérez, but that it’s a reminder of how art can always be used as a form of protest and how its creation is within everyone’s reach if they have an idea and the motivation to do it,” one person wrote in Spanish on X.

Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment over WhatsApp, Aurora said she believes Johanne Sacreblu resonated with Mexicans because they “have a profound sense of justice, but also a unique sense of humor that simply cannot be translated.” She said that while it is true cartel violence is a part of their reality, it doesn’t define who they are as people, “something Audiard failed to grasp.”

Aurora tells Yahoo that the title Johanne Sacreblu is misspelled on purpose [it should be Sacrebleu] as a protest because this is a “trans woman’s defiant response to a white man who will never understand her experience, nor does he care to.” (GLAAD called the movie a “profoundly retrograde portrayal of a trans woman” that “recycles the trans stereotypes, tropes, and clichés of the not-so-distant past.”)

The content creator said she wanted to make this satirical project based on stereotypes so that Audiard would feel as if his French culture was being reduced to a joke because that’s what she felt Emilia Pérez did to Mexicans. “Because to him, that’s all the Mexican public is: something unworthy of his time, effort or research,” she added.

Yahoo Entertainment reached out to Netflix for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Héctor Guillén, a Mexican screenwriter, took to X on Jan. 5 to post that Emilia Pérez is a “racist Eurocentrist mockery.” It has since racked up 2.8 million views on the social media platform.

In an interview with the BBC, Guillén said of Emilia Pérez, “Their way of making the film is to disregard so many in the [film] industry in Mexico… Having a few Mexicans in there does not stop it from being a Eurocentric production.”

All the while, Emila Pérez continues to receive widespread acclaim across Hollywood.

The film follows Rita (Zoe Saldaña) as she helps a cartel leader (Gascón) transition and lead a new life as a woman. Selena Gomez plays Emilia’s wife before she transitions and is later welcomed into Emilia’s home. Only one of the four main actresses, Adriana Paz, who plays Emilia’s love interest, was born and raised in Mexico. Gomez has Mexican heritage but was born and raised in the U.S. Gascón is from Spain, and Saldaña is Dominican-American. On top of this, the movie is set entirely in Mexico but was filmed at a studio in France.

Audiard has said that he didn’t do much research about Mexico before making it, but later, in an interview with CNN, he apologized for the depiction of the country after the movie began garnering negative press. However, he also defended it by describing it as “an opera” and not “realistic.” He told the interviewer, “If things seem shocking in Emilia Pérez, then I am sorry. … Cinema doesn’t provide answers; it only asks questions. But maybe the questions in Emilia Pérez are incorrect.”

Although the movie has collected numerous awards, nominations and accolades, it faces a loud, harder-to-ignore group of critics. One of the loudest right now is Aurora.

“Here you go, Audiard — take a spoonful of your own medicine,” she said about her film. “The difference? We know how to make a joke land.”

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