Alfonso Cuarón's film is the first Mexican movie to win the important international film award

Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón won the Golden Lion at the Mostra de Venise for his film Roma. The Golden Lion is the most important prize awarded at the Venice International Film Festival. It has been delivered since 1949 and is currently one of the most important awards in the film industry.

Leer en español: Festival de Cine de Venecia: ¡Alfonso Cuarón gana el León de Oro!

Roma is the first Mexican film to win the Golden Lion, and the second Latin American film, after the Venezuelan film Desde allá by Lorenzo Vigas in 2015. Italy is the most awarded country. Other winners of this version of the Venice International Film Festival were:

• Jacques Audiard, best director for The sister brothers
• Olivia Colman, best actress for The Favorite
• Willem Dafoe, best actor for Ay Eternity's Gate
• The Coen brothers, best script for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The movie

Roma is a film told as a chronicle of the childhood of Alfonso Cuarón in the Colonia Roma in Mexico City. It is a black and white film that tells the story of Cleo, a domestic employee at the service of the Cuarón family. It is told in the context of the Halconazo and the years of the Dirty War in Mexico, which took place during the 60s and 70s. In these years there were forced disappearances, repression and torture.

It is a dark age of recent Mexican history and Alfonso Cuarón brings it from the perspective of a well-to-do family that lives in Colonia Roma, where he grew up.

You can also read: Roma: A Mexican film that is not about narcos

Roma is a Netflix production that premiered on August 30 at the Venice Film Festival. This film was rejected at Cannes, so it will not be in cinemas. This opened a debate on the new platforms of streaming and on the capacity of the films made for the small screen in the most prestigious film awards.

This award claims these productions to be awarded to a film for television. Thus, this Golden Lion represents a first time in two senses: it is the first time that it is awarded to a Mexican production and it is the first time that Netflix wins it. In this way, the platform, which is usually conceived as a producer of commercial cinema, is increasingly taken seriously.

It is estimated that we can watch Roma on Netflix from December 13 this year, we can not wait!

Who is Alfonso Cuarón?

Cuarón is one of the most important international directors in Mexico. In 2014, he won the Oscar for best director for his film Gravity. This film, of which Cuarón was director, producer and screenwriter, won another six Academy Awards that year. His first years of career are due to Mexico.

He made his debut as a director in 1991 with the co-written film with his brother Carlos Cuarón, Sólo con tu pareja. This is a comedy that revolves around the theme of AIDS. In this first film and then in other productions, he collaborated with Emmanuel Lubezki, another Mexican who has marked the international film scene and who also collaborates in photography in Alejandro González Iñárritu's films.

Cuarón already has eight films directed by him in his filmography since 1991. He also directed Believe, an NBC science fiction television series that tells the story of Bo, a girl with powers.

LatinAmerican Post | Juliana Rodríguez Pabón

Translated from "Festival de Cine de Venecia: ¡Alfonso Cuarón gana el León de Oro!"