Alfonso Cuarón’s Netflix drama Roma is the director’s most personal film yet, a family drama set in Mexico City in the early 1970s. Two young domestic workers — Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) and Adela (Nancy GarcÃa), both of Mixteco descent — work for a family in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma. As their employer Sofia (Marina de Tavira) deals with her husband’s absence, the three women “construct a new sense of love and solidarity in a context of a social hierarchy where class and race are perversely intertwined,†per the movie’s description.
Cuarón acted as his own cinematographer on Roma, a first for the director. He told IndieWire he didn’t want to hire an English-speaking DP and have to translate his own memories. “Ninety percent of the scenes represented in the film are scenes taken out of my memory,†Cuarón said. “Sometimes directly, sometimes a bit more obliquely. It’s about a moment of time that shaped me, but also a moment of time that shaped a country. It was the beginning of a long transition in Mexico.†Roma will screen in select theaters starting November 21 and will appear on Netflix on December 14.