Alfonso Cuarón wins Best Director at Oscars for Roma: 'Being here doesn't get old'

Alfonso Cuarón won Best Director at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony for his intimate black-and-white drama Roma.

Taking the Oscars stage for the third time after winning Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography, Cuarón told the audience, “Thank you so much. Being here doesn’t get old.”

Cuarón’s semiautobiographical film pays tribute to the housekeeper who helped raise him, and it tells the story of Cleo (played by Best Actress nominee Yalitza Aparicio) through her life in 1970s Mexico City.

“I want to thank the Academy for recognizing a film centered around an indigenous woman, one of the 70 million domestic workers in the world without work rights,” Cuarón said in his acceptance speech. “A character who has historically been relegated to the background in cinema. As artists, our job is to look where others don’t. This responsibility becomes much more important in times where we are being encouraged to look away.”

In all, the film earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress for Marina de Tavira.

Cuarón’s Best Director honor comes five years after he previously won in the category for Gravity.

This year, he beat out fellow nominees Pawel Pawlikowski for Cold War, Adam McKay for Vice, Yorgos Lanthimos for The Favourite, and Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman.

Related content:

• Roma’s Yalitza Aparicio was ‘amazed’ to discover she was a Best Actress Oscar nominee
• Roma‘s Marina de Tavira on Alfonso Cuarón’s risk and the film’s journey to the Oscars
• Best Director Oscar contender Alfonso Cuarón on his non-traditional process for Roma