Latino directors and showbiz stars will arrive at the Oscars on Sunday hoping to make history and score another point in the battle for representation in Hollywood.
Cuban-American Ana de Armas, nominated for her highly praised performance as Marilyn Monroe in the biopic “Rubia,” may become the first Latina to win an Academy Award for best actress.
The fifth Latina nominated for the statuette in the 95-year history of Hollywood’s biggest award has a tough competition, with favorites Cate Blanchett, for “Tár”, and Michelle Yeoh, who with “Everything Everywhere at Once” also has a chance to become the first Asian to win the Oscar.
In this edition, Latin American cinema returns to compete for the best international film, after a few years of absence, with “Argentina, 1985”, the window to the historic trial of the military juntas after the dictatorship that controlled the country between 1976 and 1983.
Directed by Santiago Mitre, and starring Ricardo Darín and Peter Lanzani, the film may award the third statuette for Argentina, which has been nominated on several occasions and won in 1986 and 2010 with productions that also deal with the years of military terror.
“Argentina, 1985” competes, among others, with “All Quiet on the Front,” Netflix’s German-language film based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, one of the night’s big favorites with nine nominations.
Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, who already has two Oscars at home, has chances to add to the collection.
Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio” is nominated for best animated film, a category won last year by “Enchantment”, the Disney blockbuster that brought Colombia’s magical realism to the big screen.
Also competing for the statuette is “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”, with the voices of Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek.
Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, with four statuettes for “Roma” and “Gravity”, is competing this year for best acted short film with “Le pupille”, of which he is one of the producers.
This is the 11th nomination for Cuarón, whose versatility has led him to compete in seven categories.
Although the introspective and personal “Bardo,” by Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, failed to win recognition in the main categories, it aspires to win the Oscar for best cinematography with the nomination of Iranian-French cinematographer Darius Khondji.
Another Latin-influenced moment at Sunday’s gala will be the performance of Sofia Carson, the young artist of Colombian descent who will perform “Applause” with Diane Warren, nominated for best song for the film “Tell It Like a Woman”.
