Narco-musical "Emilia Perez" won best European film at Spain's equivalent of the Oscars on Saturday after social media posts by the movie's star prompted backlash in the middle of awards season.
The mostly Spanish-language musical tells the story of a Mexican drug cartel boss who transitions to life as a woman and turns her back on crime.
Before the scandal broke, the film picked up four Golden Globes in January and won multiple prizes at last year's Cannes Film Festival.
It also received 13 Oscar nominations, a record number for a foreign-language film.
But old social media posts by star Karla Sofia Gascon, in which she denigrates Islam, China and African American George Floyd, unleashed a scandal that has harmed her reputation and the film's chances of Oscar glory.
Voting for the Goya Awards closed on Jan. 24, days before the posts were unearthed and began recirculating.
At the ceremony in Granada, "Emilia Perez" beat out the British-Polish film "The Zone of Interest," Latvia's "Flow," Italy's "La Chimera" and France's "The Count of Monte Cristo."
Gascon, who lives near Madrid, did not attend the event and the award was collected by the film's Spanish distributor.
Gascon has apologized for her posts and insisted that she is "not a racist."
Hollywood trade outlets reported that "Emilia Perez," the distributor of Netflix, which was banking on the film for its first Best Picture Oscar, dropped Gascon from the publicity campaign and distanced itself from the actress.
The movie's French director, Jacques Audiard, has called the posts "inexcusable" and "absolutely hateful."
Even before the social media controversy, the musical thriller was garnering criticism for its depictions of Mexico.
Thousands of Mexicans have given the film the lowest possible rating on online movie review websites IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, where it currently has an 18% audience ranking.
Mexican novelist Jorge Volpi called the production "one of the crudest and most misleading films of the 21st century."
