Awards for Roma open dialogue for diversity: Cuaron

The strokes of his cinematic paintbrush filled up the black and white canvas of Roma with the colours of universal emotions in an evocative narrative set in 1970s Mexico is winning hearts all over. Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, whose latest film has been sweeping awards one after another, says accolades for a movie such as Roma mean a lot for the increasing dialogue on diversity.

After a slew of honours and critical acclaim at international film festivals, Roma registered a twin win at the Golden Globe Awards over last weekend, and has scooped up seven nominations for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards 2019.

It’s an Oscar frontrunner in the Best Foreign Language Film category, and the international media is abuzz that it may well change the Academy Awards’ 90-year history by becoming the first non-English Best Picture winner. But the wait for Oscar nominations continues.

Awards, to Cuaron — who broke ground as the first Mexican filmmaker to win the Best Director Oscar for Gravity (2004) — as such “mean nothing in the context of history”.

“Some movies, they are not recognised and later they become masterpieces. Or some films win many awards and are forgotten three years later. But when a film like Roma is recognised for awards, I feel the importance of that is to open the dialogue for diversity... Diversity in which people are open to embrace a human experience even if it is shown in the form of other people that aren’t like you,” said Cuaron.