With Gravity, filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón pitched viewers hurtling into the oblivion of space miles above the surface of the Earth. And now with his next feature, he’s got his feet back on solid ground for a personal and visually-striking black-and-white historical drama. It’s called Roma, it’s coming to Netflix, and the first full trailer has now arrived.
On the one hand it’s a total gearshift from the sci-fi trappings of Gravity and Children of Men, and a world away from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – but Roma looks like more of the bold, stirring filmmaking Cuarón is known for. Here’s the official synopsis for the film: “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.”
Roma is both written and directed by Cuarón – and despite being a Netflix film, it’s headed for some kind of limited cinema release. That’s surely to make it eligible for awards season, and with an Oscar-friendly end-of-year release date you can bet that this one will be aiming for a shiny gold statue come 2019. We’ll get to see the full film on 14 December.
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