Roma (directed by Alfonso Cuarón)

Drawn from Cuarón's own childhood memories, Roma is a semi-autobiographical portrait of a year in the life of Cleo, a domestic worker for a middle-class family in early-1970s Mexico City. Shot in black and white, the film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography — making Cuarón the first person to win the cinematography Oscar for a film he also directed.

Visual Development

The key art was built to center Cleo — keeping the protagonist, so often overlooked in her real-world role, at the heart of the imagery rather than in the background. The visual approach stayed true to the film's own restraint: black-and-white treatment, quiet compositions, and a documentary-like stillness that mirrored Cuarón's deliberately unhurried, steady framing designed to place equal emphasis on the performers and their surroundings. Rather than dramatizing or reinterpreting the film's world, the goal was to honor its exact tone — letting the art feel like an extension of the movie itself, not a departure from it.