Alfonso Cuarón, the creative mind behind Children of Men and the Oscar-winning Gravity, has officially wrapped filming on Roma, an intimate Mexican drama that has spent the past 16 years simmering on the back-burner.
The filmmaker, who spoke at a new conference in Mexico City (via The List), echoed the advice given to him by friend and colleague Guillermo del Toro when explaining his decision to circle back to his native homeland, before teasing that Roma is a 1970s period drama loosely inspired by Cuarón’s own experiences as a child and his Mexican identity. Beyond that, there are precious few details available for the director’s deeply personal project – no casting announcement, no synopsis – but sources claim it will involve the infamous Corpus Christi Massacre, an event in which soldiers killed liberal student protesters in Mexico City circa 1971, in some capacity.
Working in tandem with production designer Eugenio Caballero (Pan’s Labyrinth), Alfonso Cuarón touched base on the period setting.
“We weren’t thinking about this frivolously,” Cuarón said. “We did this to re-create a historic moment in Mexicans’ consciousness. … For that very reason, it was essential to film this scene where the events happened.
Bouncing off that, Caballero began by thanking the local authorities for their cooperation, before teasing the film’s nostalgic factor.
“By the nature of the project, being a period film, we had to close streets. In addition to the support from the authorities, the people understood what the project was about and it was interesting to talk about that city for which many people were stirred by nostalgia.”
After finding international success through Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men and Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón is ready to return to his roots with Roma. Now that filming has wrapped, the feature will spend the remainder of the year incubating in post-production ahead of a release in 2018.