Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Roma’ Wins Best Foreign Language Film at 2019 Golden Globes

Cuaron is also nominated for Best Director.

¡Viva Mexico! 

Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma took home Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Golden Globes, which took place at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, on Sunday. 

The film, shot in black and white with an almost entirely Mexican crew, marks Cuarón’s first project since 2013’s Gravity. Set in 1970 and 1971 in Colonia Roma, a town in Mexico City, the film centers on Cleo, played by newcomer Yalitza Aparicio, a character based on Cuarón’s nanny, whose real name is Liboria "Libo" Rodriguez.

"Thank you very much Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira," Cuarón said during his acceptance speech. "Cinema at its best, builds bridges to other cultures. As we cross these bridges, this experience and these new shapes and these new faces, we need to realize why they may be strange, they are not unfamiliar. We need to understand how much we have in common.”

"This film would have not been possible without the specific colors that make me who I am," he continued. "Gracias famila y  gracias Mexico."

Cuarón, who wrote the script in three weeks and shot the film in chronological order, says his family was a key component in helping bring the film to life. 

“[My family has] been very supportive. All of them shared with me memories while I was in the process of doing it,” he told ET’s Courtney Tezeno during the film’s red carpet at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood last month. “They also shared personal objects that they kept from that time.” Those objects were included in the film. 

“The whole film is a long flashback of my childhood,” Cuarón added. “It was a whole process. The film was based on memory. I was not only recreating moments but [we] were shooting them in the place where they took place and reproducing the spaces to the inch. And also cast people that look alike to the original people 40 years ago. So, it was kind of an odd experience reliving those moments.”

ET also spoke with the film’s producer, Gabriela Rodriguez, about the intimate project.

“I’m really proud of the film,” she told ET last month. “I connected with the story. The experience, the way we made it was such an intimate project, [it was] mostly with [an entire] Mexican crew. The fact that the world has taken it in such an amazing way and responded to it and connected to it - that is reward enough. Everything that comes next is just cherry on top.”

Roma is playing in select theaters and streaming on Netflix.

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