Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard left the Oscars with an Academy Award in hand — but he declined the opportunity to speak about the transgender community after his win.

After winning the Oscar for Best Original Song for “El Mal” alongside musicians Clément Ducol and Camille, the French filmmaker headed to the press room at the Dolby Theatre and was asked if he’d like to take a moment to address contemporary politics in the wake of anti-trans policies.

“Since I didn’t win Best Film or Best Director, I didn’t have the opportunity to speak,” Audiard said via an interpreter. “But had I had that opportunity, I would have spoken up.”

Audiard’s film did, indeed, lose Best Picture to Anora and Best Director to that film’s director, Sean Baker. However, his win for Best Original Song gave him an opportunity to speak with the press at the ceremony for several minutes. He also took the stage with his “El Mal” co-writers during the live broadcast but ceded the podium to the couple and did not address the audience while on stage.

Emilia Pérez follows a Mexican drug cartel head (Karla Sofía Gascón) who reinvents herself and attempts to atone for her crimes after undergoing gender-affirming surgery. The film was nominated for 13 Oscars — the most of any film this year — and ultimately won two: Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldaña and Best Original Song.

The film received mixed reviews from critics and audiences, who disagreed on the film’s success in representing Mexican culture and the transgender experience.

Emila Pérez‘s Oscar hopes were jeapordized after numerous offensive social media posts from Gascón went viral, in which the actress made controversial remarks about Islam, the murder of George Floyd, and a prior Academy Awards ceremony.

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Audiard told Deadline that he was “very disappointed” that the controversy surrounding Gascón’s remarks were “taking up all the space” in the conversation surrounding his film. “That makes me very sad,” he said. “It’s very hard for me to think back to the work I did with Karla Sofía. The trust we shared, the exceptional atmosphere that we had on the set that was indeed based on trust. And when you have that kind of relationship and suddenly you read something that that person has said, things that are absolutely hateful and worthy of being hated, of course that relationship is affected. It’s as if you fall into a hole. Because what Karla Sofía said is inexcusable.”

Oscars host Conan O’Brien began the show with a joke about the Gascón controversy in his opening monologue. “Little fact for you: Anora uses the f-word 479 times,” he joked. “That’s three more than the record set by Karla Sofía Gascón’s publicist. ‘She tweeted what!?'”

Additional reporting by Maureen Lee Lenker.