Roma’s Year

The Oscars without a host that year, which somehow felt right. The ceremony had more room to breathe.

What stuck with me was Roma. Cuarón’s film in black and white, streaming on Netflix, in Spanish—it just kept winning. Every technical award, the directing prize. The German entry that had looked promising didn’t have a chance. The anime didn’t either. Roma moved through the night like it was inevitable.

Green Book got the acting categories and the screenwriting stuff. Mahershala Ali again, which felt earned. Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody was a win I wasn’t expecting to care about, but the film was huge in its way, and he was all of it—that’s what you want from that performance. Olivia Colman took best actress, which I felt good seeing.

Lady Gaga’s Shallow won for the song. Mark Ronson behind her, her voice doing all the work. It was already everywhere; the Oscar just made it official.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse won animated. Black Panther took everything else visual—sets, costumes, music, sound work. The sweep was complete.

But Roma, mostly. A film that’s formally restrained, in black and white, in Spanish, moving at its own pace, not trying to be comfortable—and it wins the directing award at the Oscars. I kept thinking about what that means. Not about the film itself, but about what the Academy values when everything else falls away. Whether that says something true about cinema, or whether I’m reading too much into an awards show, I honestly don’t know. But it felt significant in the moment.