‘Roma’: Everything to Know About Netflix’s Oscar Nominee

The list of nominees at the 91st Academy Awards includes Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, the first Netflix movie nominated for Best Picture. An autobiographical film based on Cuaron’s own experiences growing up in Mexico City during the early 1970s, the film is tied with The Favourite as the most-nominated movies at the Oscars.

Roma is Cuaron’s follow-up to 2013’s Gravity, which earned him his first Best Director Oscar. The movie is the definition of a personal, director-driven film, as Cuaron was also a co-producer and co-editor. He was also the sole credited writer and cinematographer, meaning Cuaron is personally nominated for four of the film’s 10 Oscar nominations.

Aside from Best Picture, Roma was nominated for Best Director, Best Actress for Yalitza Aparicio, Best Supporting Actress for Marina de Tavira, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. It won Best Foreign Language Film. It is the most-nominated foreign-language film since 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

The film’s title comes from the Colonia Roma district in Mexico City, often simply called Roma. Aparicio stars as Cleo Gutierrez, an indigenous maid for a middle-class family, while de Tavira plays Sofia, the mother of the family. Episodic in nature, the film follows the ups and downs of their lives as student anti-government demonstrations play out in the background.

In the film, Sofia and her four children’s lives are upended when their father (Fernando Grediaga) has an affair and leaves the family. Cuaron’s own father left his family when he was a child, and he brought those emotions with him when he started the film.

“It was not necessarily a pleasant period in my life and maybe it’s a period that created fears that lasted for many years,” the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban director told CBS News. “I think the core of it is pretty universal because at the end, the film deals with this shared experience of loneliness … but only the bonds of affection, they give meaning to that loneliness.”

Cuaron hopes the film shows Mexicans in a new light for moviegoers, in an era when President Donald Trump is calling for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“When you have all this rhetoric of talking about Mexicans as rapists and dangerous and all of that stuff, you have an experience that, ‘Hey, it’s people. It’s people like you and me,’” the director said. “And we share the same dreams and we share the same need for love.”

To bring a level of authenticity few movies can have, Cuaron used a cast of mostly unknowns. Aparicio has never appeared in a film before and was cast after Cuaron auditioned almost 3,000 women for the part of Cleo. She is the first indigenous woman and only the fourth Latina nominated for an Oscar. She is also only the third Mexican woman to earn a Best Actress nomination.

“I feel very happy because at the beginning of each new year I say, ‘I’m going to go out more, I’m going to learn more,’ and so on, and every year was the same,” Aparicio told Harper’s Bazaar about the awards season experience. “But this year was different because I actually began to go and get to know different places. I met a lot of people and had new experiences. It’s made me very happy.”

Roma can now be streamed on Netflix.

Photo credit: Netflix