BEVERLY HILLS: Surreal narcomusical `Emilia Perez` and epic immigrant drama `The Brutalist` were the big winners at the Golden Globes on Sunday, as prizes were shared widely across an international crop of movies at the year`s first major showbiz awards gala.

French director Jacques Audiard`s Mexico-set `Emilia Perez` took four prizes, including best comedy or musical film, while `The Brutalist` was named best drama and also picked up best actor for Adrien Brody, who plays a Hungarian Holocaust survivor.

`Emilia Perez,` about a drug lord who transitions to life as a woman, had entered the night with the most nominations at 10.

It won for best non-English language film and best original song, while Zoe Saldana took best supporting actress honours, nudging out her co-star Selena Gomez.

`You can maybe put us in jail, you can beat us up, but you never can take away our soul, our resistance, our identity, said Karla Sofia Gascon, the film`s star, who is transgender. She added: `Raise your voice... and say, `I won. I am who I am, not who you want`.` Big wins at the Globes can help movies earn new audiences and build vital momentum toward the Oscars in early March.

Sunday also proved an important night for `The Brutalist,` which shrugged off concerns over its sprawling runtime to earn best director for Brady Corbet. `I was told that no one would come out and see it,` said Corbet, of his epic about a Jewish architect who survives Nazi persecution and emigrates to the United States.

`No one was asking for a three-and-a-half hour film about a mid-century designer... but it works,` he added. In one of the night`s biggest upsets, Brazil`s Fernanda Torres won best actress in a drama film for `Pm Still Here,` which chronicles a family ripped apart by the country`s military dictatorship in the 1970s.

Comebacks Brody`s win was one of the night`s remarkable career comebacks, more than two decades after he became the youngest ever Oscar best actor winner for `The Pianist,` in which he also played a Holocaust survivor.`There was a time not too long ago that I felt that this may be a moment never afforded to me again,` he said. `This story... is very reminiscent of my mother`s, and my ancestral journey of fleeing the horrors of war and coming to this great country.` And there was another late-career triumph for Demi Moore, who won best actress in a comedy for body horror flick `The Substance, which takes a satirical and often grotesque look at the pressures placed on women by society as they age.

Accepting her prize, Moore reflected on how decades ago, she had been told by a Hollywood producer that she was`a popcorn actress.` `I bought in, and I believed that, and that corroded me over time,` said the now 62-year-old `Ghost` star.

But `I had this magical, bold, courageous, out-of-the-box, absolutely bonkers script come across my desk called `The Substance,` and the universe told me that `you`re not done.

Ozempic The always controversial Globes are in year two of a revamp, following a Los Angeles Times expose in 2021 that showed that the awards` voting body the Hollywood Foreign Press Association had no Black members.

Now under new ownership, and with the HFPA disbanded, organisers were hoping to capitalise on a ratings bump registered last January.

Comedian Nikki Glaser hosted the ceremony, kicking off the gala with an irreverent, well-received monologue.

`Welcome to the 82nd Golden Globes, Ozempic`s biggest night,` she quipped, referring to the weight-loss drug that has proven wildly popular in famously looksconscious Hollywood.

Among the dramas, `Conclave,` a fictionalised account of high-stakes Vatican horse-trading, depicting how the death of a pope sends the church`s various factions into battle for its future, took the award for best screenplay.

In comedy, Sebastian Stan won the best actor for `A Different Man,` in which he portrays a man who undergoes experimental treatment for a disfiguring facial condition, but comes to rue the consequences. `Our ignorance and discomfort around disability and disfigurement has to end now,` said Stan.-AFP