After a one-week delay due to the L.A. fires, the Oscar nominations are out, but – we already knew who would not be nominated – films from any Spanish-speaking Latin American country. Yes, we’re thrilled for Brazil and I’m Still Here. No, Emilia Pérez doesn’t count – it’s French. We wanted the Academy to recognize at least one of the year’s three wonderful films from the region directed by Latinas – Sujo by Mexico’s Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez, In Her Place by Chile’s Maite Alberdi, and Aire: Just Breathe by the Dominican Republic’s Leticia Tonos. But instead, all we got were Latina Oscar snubs.
This sad trend is not a one-off. Of the nearly 70 years that the Academy has awarded an Oscar for what was previously known as the “Best Foreign Language Film,” only four have gone to the region. Mexico has won just once, Argentina twice, and Chile once. Three of these four wins occurred in the last 15 years, even though Mexico has been submitting entries since the second year of the award in the 1950s, at the height of the golden age of Mexican cinema.
What accounts for the Academy’s persistent failure to recognize Spanish-language Latin American films? It is clearly not the films’ quality or subject matter. These interesting, touching, and even groundbreaking movies and their supremely talented directors are definitely worth following, even if the Oscars cannot find space to recognize them.
Sujo

In Sujo, up-and-coming Mexican filmmakers Rondero and Valadez team up again to deliver a nuanced and somewhat magical tale that explores a tragedy at the core of the Mexican experience today. Sujo, the title character, begins as a four-year-old boy whose father is murdered by the local cartels. From there, his life remains immersed in Mexico’s particular, perpetual cycle of violence. Raised by his aunt Nemesia, a local witch, Sujo tries to escape his narco-fate only to see it catch up to him time and again as if the ghosts of the past have a perpetual claim to his present and future. Rondero and Valadez rely heavily on ethereal cinematography that compounds the film’s ghostly themes and even dips into magical realism, a welcome development that places Mexican cinema on its strongest footing. And they leverage their nuanced script, which has its finger on the suffering but hopeful pulse of Mexican society.
In Her Place

In Chile’s In Her Place, documentarian Maite Alberdi (nominated previously for The Mole Agent) recounts the tale of a 1955 murder committed by Chilean writer Maria Carolina Geel (Francesca Lewin). At the heart of the story is Mercedes (Elisa Zuleta), the paralegal for the judge in charge of the case, who becomes strangely infatuated with the accused when she visits her apartment. Alberdi has a keen eye for nonfiction crime stories, which she uses effectively to give this film a sense of hyperrealism even though half of the story (that of Mercedes) is made up. This invented character exposes Chilean society of the 1950s, exploring whether an independent, fulfilling existence was possible for women in the country then, and whether it is achievable today. In the end, In Her Place is an interesting procedural fused with a contemplative reflection on the role of women in society.
Aire: Just Breathe

By DR’s hyper-prolific filmmaker Leticia Tonos, Aire: Just Breathe is set in a distant, dystopian future where a chemical war has left the men of the planet sterile until a biologist tries to inseminate herself with the help of an A.I. system called VIDA (played by Paz Vega). Like with her other films, Tonos injects a subtle dose of Caribbean identity in her story, even though her visuals are most striking when she portrays a decayed, decimated planet inhabited by shadows of our current humanity. And while none of the foreign films nominated this year focus on futuristic or dystopian themes (Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez does have an element of fantasy), that is perhaps all the more reason for the Academy to have given it a closer look.
The Academy had every opportunity to recognize talented Latina filmmakers in this category this year but continued to overlook them, delivering three Latina Oscar snubs. It is particularly telling that so many Latin American countries’ film selection committees are willing to pick Latina-directed movies for this award, but the Academy itself does not appear able to do so. It seems to echo a larger trend, one that has seen the vast majority of LATAM societies electing women presidents, while our nation remains unable to do so.