Pressure For Motion Picture Academy to allow Netflix to accept ROMA submission for the best picture category
ROMA to debut on Netflix’s streaming service and distribute it theatrically worldwide on Dec. 14.
By Elia Esparza
Venice-Telluride-Toronto film festivals have past, there are some favorites already being predicted for this year’s best picture Oscar race. And, guess what, Alfonso Cuarón is a favorite among the ten films that have been seen and assessed, according to Variety.
Among the films that are romancing Oscars are: Black Panther (Disney); BlacKKKlansmen (Focus); Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Fox Searchlight); The Favorite (Fox Searchlight); First Man (Universal); Green Book (Universal); If Beale Street Could Talk (Annapurna); ROMA (Netflix); A Star Is Born (Warner Bros.) and Widows (Fox).
Of course, there are many other films to come, so it will be long waiting game until Oscar contenders are announced, but there is no doubt, that Cuaron’s ROMA, who according to one Variety reviewer stated:
The one masterpiece that has some observers wondering: Will the Academy finally embrace a Netflix film in the best picture category? To be perfectly honest, the Oscars are a farce if they don’t Alfonso Cuaron’s memoir-as-cinema is an impeccable work of art and the stream giant’s best shot at such recognition to date.”
On September 14th, Variety reported that regardless as to what happens with Oscar’s best picture category, because no one knows if the Academy will allow the streaming giant Netflix to submit a film, Mexico has selected Cuaron’s ROMA as the country’s foreign-language submission for the 91st Academy Awards.
ROMA is produced by Esperanto Filmoj and Participant Media. Netflix will debut ROMA on its streaming service and distribute it theatrically worldwide on Dec. 14. Cuarón’s autobiographically inspired film is set in Mexico City and covers a year in the early ’70s as a middle-class family is quietly and unassumingly cared for by its beloved, live-in nanny and housekeeper (portrayed by Yalitza Aparicio).
While ROMA is considered a strong contender for a best picture nomination, during the past 20 years, the following foreign-language films have been nominated in both categories: Life Is Beautiful, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Letters From Iwo Jima, Babel, and Amour. Five other foreign-language movies, Grand Illusion, Z, The Emigrants, Cries and Whistpers, and The Postman, have received Best Picture nominations.
And, speaking of ROMA, there have been no shortage of media coverage recently:
La Opinion interviews ROMA co-star, Marina de Tavira, who was a presenter at the recent Hispanic Heritage Foundation Awards and hosted a screening for Latino leaders in D.C.
ROMA is filmmaking as gesture, an invitation to generosity that we perhaps didn’t know we could feel.” TIME MAGAZINE
One would think that after the success of Gravity, studios would have been lined up to give Cuaron a free reign to create whatever he wanted as his next film. But imagine pitching a movie that would be a rough autobiography of his own childhood and that he’d present it in black and white, and in a foreign language, and with a cast comprised of little-known actors — it was just too big of a gamble. Hollywood’s loss was Netflix’s gain.
Film Schools Project says,”Unlike his two most recent films, Children of Men and Gravity, ROMA is a personal story Cuarón couldn’t have made any other way. By collaborating with Netflix, he could go in a direction that made sense for his picture, allowing him to summon the story of a Mexico he remembers. It is a stunning achievement of cinema and is not only the best film Netflix has released, but it is Cuarón’s crowning achievement.”
Alfonso Cuarón’s autobiographical, black-and-white ode to the woman who raised him.” VANITY FAIR.
More About ROMA: The most personal project to date from Academy Award®-winning director and writer Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Y Tu Mamá También), ROMA follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a young domestic worker for a family in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma in Mexico City. Delivering an artful love letter to the women who raised him, Cuarón draws on his own childhood to create a vivid and emotional portrait of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst political turmoil of the 1970s. Cuarón’s first project since the groundbreaking Gravity in 2013, ROMA will be available in theaters and on Netflix in December.
“Oscar-Winning Director Alfonso Cuarón Reveals Why He Kept His Passion Project ROMA’ a Secret From His Cast” DEADLINE
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