Oscars: Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Roma’ Wins Mexico Its First Foreign-Language Honor

Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma on Sunday won Mexico its first-ever foreign-language Oscar.  

With his Roma nominations for the 2019 Oscars, the director tied the record for the most personal nominations for one film. In addition to being up for best director, he also got nominations for original screenplay, cinematography and best picture as a producer. He won best cinematography earlier in the night  and won the best director Oscar toward the end of the show.

The director already made history in 2014 when he became the first Mexico-born filmmaker to win a directing Oscar for his space thriller Gravity. 

Despite the individual achievements of the so-called Three Amigos, as Cuaron, Guillermo del Toro and Alejandro G. Inarritu are known, and despite eight nominations — excluding this year — Mexico had never won the Oscar in the best foreign-language film category before Sunday.

Cuaron produced, wrote and directed Roma, which he describes as his most personal film yet. The movie draws on his memories of growing up in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood. Cuaron also shot the picture himself because his regular cinematographer, three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki, was unavailable.

The Spanish-language, black-and-white memoir film, distributed by Netflix, drew rave reviews after premiering at the Venice Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion.

Mexico’s first foreign-language Oscar win follows Chile’s first-ever honor last year for Sebastian Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman.