Tonight Roma won Best Foreign Language film Award. Alfonso Cuarón accepted the award.
Roma – A 2018 drama film written and directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Cuarón also produced, co-edited and photographed the film. It stars Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa, Enoc Leaño and Daniel Valtierra. Set in the early 1970s, the film is a semi-autobiographical take on Cuarón’s upbringing in Mexico City, and follows the life of a live-in housekeeper to a middle-class family. The title refers to the Colonia Roma a neighborhood in Mexico City.
Roma had its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on August 30, 2018, where it won the Golden Lion. It began a limited theatrical run on November 21, 2018, and started streaming on Netflix on December 14, 2018.[5][6] The film was acclaimed by critics, who called it “achingly beautiful” and “engrossing”, and was chosen by Time magazine and the New York Film Critics Circle as the best film of 2018, and by the National Board of Review as one of the top ten best films of 2018. At the 76th Golden Globe Awards, it earned nominations for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, and has been selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards.
The film’s events take place in 1970 and 1971, predominantly in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. Cleo (named after the Cléo character in Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7) is a maid in the household of Sofia, whose household consists of her husband Antonio, their four young children, Sofia’s mother, Teresa, and another maid, Adela. Antonio, a doctor, leaves for a conference in Quebec. Among scenes of Cleo’s life with the family – her cleaning, cooking, taking the kids to and from school, serving them meals, putting the kids to bed and waking them up – it becomes clear that Sofia and Antonio’s marriage is strained. After a brief return, Antonio leaves again, saying he is going to Quebec for a few weeks.
In their time off, Cleo and Adela go out with their boyfriends, Fermín and Ramón, to the theater. At the entrance, Cleo and Fermín decide to rent a room instead of seeing the movie. Fermín, while naked, shows off his martial arts skill using the shower curtain rod as a pole. At another date, both couples meet in a movie theater, where Cleo tells Fermín that she thinks she is pregnant. As the movie is about to end, Fermín says he is going to the rest room and will be back, but then does not return and is nowhere to be found when Cleo goes outside. Cleo reveals the same concern to Sofia, who takes her to get checked at the hospital where Antonio works. The doctor there confirms her pregnancy.
Sofia takes Cleo, Adela, and her children to a family friend’s hacienda for New Year’s. Both the landowners and the workers mention recent tensions over land in the area. During the celebrations, a fire erupts in the forest. Everyone helps put out the fire as a man counts down the remaining seconds of 1970 before singing in the foreground.