French LGBTQ+ groups have filed a complaint against right-wing French politician Marion Maréchal after her transphobic remarks about Emilia Pérez star Karla Sofía Gascón, who won a shared award for Best Actress at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
This past weekend, the transgender actress accepted the honor alongside her co-stars Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and Zoe Saldaña for their roles in Jacques Audiard’s buzzy musical cartel film, with Gascón making history as the first trans performer to take home the award. During her tearful acceptance speech, she dedicated her win to all trans people “who suffer and must keep faith that changing is possible.” She ended her remarks by saying, “If you have made us suffer, it is time for you also to change.”
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Shortly after the award was presented, Maréchal took to X to bemoan Gascón’s win (and misgender her), writing, “It is therefore a man who receives the prize for… female interpretation at Cannes.” Maréchal added a common anti-trans talking point to her post: “Progress for the left is the erasure of women and mothers.”
Following Maréchal’s comments, six French LGBTQ+ groups — Adheos, Families LGBT, Fédération LBGTI +, Mousse, Stop Homophobie, and Quazar — filed an official complaint against her with the Paris Public Prosecutor over “insult due to gender identity.” In a joint press release sent to the French news agency AFP, the organizations noted that being found guilty of this offense is punishable by a year in prison and a fine of up to 45,000 Euros.
“Marion Maréchal’s comments deny the very existence of transgender people, as well as the violence and discrimination to which these people are victims on a daily basis,” the organizations’ lawyer, Étienne Deshoulières, said in a statement.
According to Deadline, Maréchalan — who is currently campaigning for European Parliament elections as the head of the far-right French party Reconquête! — stood by her comments during an interview with the French radio station France Inter radio on May 28.
“I’m not going to let myself be intimidated by legal threats from LGT militant-activists,” she said. “The truth is that being a man or a woman is a biological reality, whether you like it or not. The XX and XY chromosomes cannot be undone.”
Maréchalan can pander to her transphobic base all she wants, but that won’t change the fact that Emilia Pérez has emerged as one of Cannes’ 2024 breakouts. Despite its ambitious swings in tone and genre, the film has been a hit with critics overall, scoring an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and ranking near the top of the Screen Daily Jury Grid, which provides a snapshot of critical opinion at the festival.
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In fact, this year’s Cannes awards proved to be a breath of fresh air in more ways than one. American filmmaker Sean Baker’s new movie Anora took home the Palme d’Or, the Cannes Film Festival’s most prestigious prize. Baker — who previously directed Tangerine, a film about trans sex workers — dedicated his Cannes win to “all sex workers, past, present, and future.” Like it or not, 2024’s Cannes will be remembered as one of the festival’s boldest, queerest years in recent memory.
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