Netflix has decided to step it up for this year’s Oscar campaign, perhaps hearing the complaints levied against them in previous seasons. We’d heard rumblings that Paul Greengrass’s 22 July and Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma would receive expanded theatrical runs compared to typical Netflix releases, and we saw that play out with the former. Now the streaming service has confirmed the same treatment for Cuaron’s Venice award winner and Mexican entry for Best Foreign film at the Oscars.
Roma will receive a day and date release on December 14th, playing in 100 theaters in the U.S. and around the world at the same time it can be streamed. Deadline adds that Netflix is considering an IMAX run for the deeply personal drama, as well as emphasizing theaters that will show it in Dolby Atmos, the preferred sound system crucial to presenting the film as Cuaron intended.
Here is the movie’s synopsis: A vivid portrayal of domestic strife and social hierarchy amidst political turmoil, ROMA follows a young domestic worker Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) from Mixteco heritage descent and her co-worker Adela (Nancy García), also Mixteca, who work for a small family in the middle-class neighborhood of Roma. Mother of four, Sofia (Marina de Tavira), copes with the extended absence of her husband, Cleo faces her own devastating news that threatens to distract her from caring for Sofia’s children, whom she loves as her own. While trying to construct a new sense of love and solidarity in a context of a social hierarchy where class and race are perversely intertwined, Cleo and Sofia quietly wrestle with changes infiltrating the family home in a country facing confrontation between a government-backed militia and student demonstrators.
For those of us in the DMV, Roma will be playing at the Middleburg Film Festival this week. You can get tickets for that here, if they’re still available. Otherwise you can wait to see it as Cuaron intended on December 14th.
