Roma is not only one of the best films of the decade, but director Alfonso Cuarón’s best film. After taking a five year break from film, Cuarón comes back to tell one of his most personal films about a servant that works for a wealthy family in Mexico.

The events in this Netflix original film are real events that Cuarón witnessed as a child. In the final shot, a title appears that says dedicated to Libo who was the real life servant of Cuarón’s family. There is so much care put into the film. Cuarón only gave actors the lines of the script for what they were shooting that day. He also gathered 70 percent of his family’s furniture to use on the set.

Cuarón had a heavy load on his shoulders being the director, one of the producers, the writer, editor and cinematographer. Like usual, Cuarón helms all of the film elements with great care and perfection. He is also able to show themes of single parenthood and social classes.

Cuarón’s usual cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, could not work on the film so Cuarón did it himself. This black and white film is beautifully shot with the only camera movement being incredibly drawn out pans.The pans work so well because of the blocking Cuarón does with the actors. Blocking is the actors movement in relation to the camera. This film has the best cinematography of the year.

The servant in the film is portrayed by Yalitza Aparicio. This is the first project she has ever acted in. This is shocking because she is incredible in this film. This along with Toni Collette in Hereditary are the best performances I have seen by a female actor this year. Cuarón will use one of his signature long takes that will last for a couple of minutes and be flawless throughout.

The film is also incredibly dreadful and heartbreaking with a scene showing the Corpus Christi massacre and two devastating scenes which take place in a hospital and the other on the beach. Those two scenes left me incredibly choked up.

It was refreshing to see Cuarón make a movie that was this subdued. His previous films included Gravity, Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which had big budgets and had some big life or death situation happening. Roma isn’t that. This brought me back to the last foreign language film he made Y Tu Mamá También. He relies on film elements and an amazing script to keep you engaged.

Films like Roma are ones that you will never forget about. This is one of the greatest foreign language films I have ever seen, along with one of the best films of the decade. Roma is the closest you can get to making a perfect film.

Grade: A+