Roma Offical Trailer 2

Oscars: Roma star Jorge Antonio Guerrero could miss ceremony after being denied US visa three times

The actor, who plays Fermin, said officials thought he was a worker seeking employment

Jacob Stolworthy @Jacob_Stol

Thursday 24 January 2019 11:29

One of the stars of Roma is worried he’ll miss the Academy Awards as he’s been prevented from entering the US three times before.

Jorge Antonio Guerrero, whose co-stars Yalitza Aparicio and Marina De Tavira have been nominated in two key categories, was unable to participate in any press events outside of mexico as he had his visa continually rejected.

He revealed the news to El Sol de Acapulco after learned that the Alfonso Cuarón film had scored 10 Oscar nominations, tying with The Favourite as the most recognised film of 2019

Guerrero – who plays Fermin - said that he was first denied entry as a tourist before Roma first premiered at the Venice Film Festival, but that the following two times were when Roma became an awards favourite.

He also added that, one of the times he attempted to enter the country, United States Embassy officials in Mexico City were concerned he was a worker seeking employment.

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

Show all 10

These days, it sometimes seems heretical to admit to an admiration for Woody Allen but his best films stand up as well as ever. Annie Hall offers the New York based comedian’s familiar angst and also has a superlative performance from Diane Keaton as the free spirited, preppy heroine he falls in love with.

1/10The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

10. Annie Hall

These days, it sometimes seems heretical to admit to an admiration for Woody Allen but his best films stand up as well as ever. Annie Hall offers the New York based comedian’s familiar angst and also has a superlative performance from Diane Keaton as the free spirited, preppy heroine he falls in love with.

Rex Features

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

9. The Best Years of our Lives

William Wyler’s film about three veterans coming home at the end of the war still has a huge emotional kick. They’re from different classes and backgrounds but struggle terribly to readjust to civilian life. Some accuse the film of being pious and self-righteous but it deals frankly and very movingly with both the soldiers’ problems and those of their families and friends in understanding them. It won its best picture Oscar in the year in which It’s a Wonderful Life was also nominated.

Rex Features

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

8. An American in Paris

The best MGM musicals showed extraordinary artistry. This is one of the greatest. It’s not just the choreography or Gene Kelly’s wildly energetic performance as the aspiring artist in postwar Paris but the use of colour and sound. The ballet sequence at the end of the film stands alongside that in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes as a perfect example of filmmaking in which every element balances perfectly.

Alamy Stock Photo

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

7. Casablanca

Producer Hal Wallis at Warner Bros had a knack for overseeing films that were both mainstream and had a social conscience. Not only did Casablanca have Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains, but it also dealt with refugees, betrayal and wartime politics. The script by Julius and Philip G Epstein provided lines of dialogue about gin joints, rounding up the usual suspects and playing “As Time Goes By” that are still quoted today. Few other best picture winners are as engrained in the public consciousness as Casablanca.

Rex Features

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

6. On the Waterfront

Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront can be read as the director’s attempt at justifying his own craven behaviour, naming names in front of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, during the communist witch hunts. Its politics are complicated and contradictory. It is also magnificently acted. Marlon Brando gives arguably his greatest performance of all as Terry Molloy, the dockworker and pigeon fancier who could have been a contender in life and in the boxing ring if only his brother had stood by him when he needed him most.

Rex Features

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

5. Lawrence of Arabia

Easy to dismiss as a jingoistic widescreen epic, David Lean’s film about TE Lawrence makes astonishing viewing seen in 70mm. It also offers a probing and subtle portrayal of Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), the masochist who is both the quintessential English hero and the quintessential English outsider.

Rex Features

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

4. All About Eve

Joseph L Mankiewicz’s drama about a young actress on the make and the established star whose career she wants to usurp boasts some of the most caustic dialogue in any Hollywood best picture winner. The brilliance of Bette Davis as the star and of Anne Baxter as the seemingly ingenuous but utterly ruthless young pretender is matched by George Sanders’ wonderfully acidic performance as the theatre critic, Addison DeWitt.

Rex Features

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

3. The Godfather Part II

Still the greatest sequel in Hollywood history, this film emulated its predecessor The Godfather, in winning the best picture Oscar and out-stripped it in the brilliance of its craftsmanship and performances. Everything here, from Gordon Willis’s cinematography to the parallel stories of Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone as the crime family boss in the late Fifties and Robert De Niro as his father Vito many years before, works near perfectly. The rival Best Picture nominees in 1974 included Lenny, Chinatown and The Conversation (also directed by Francis Ford Coppola). All would have been worthy winners in other years.

Paramount/Kobal/REX

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

2. Unforgiven

The western was considered an anachronism and so was Clint Eastwood himself when Eastwood made his blood soaked masterpiece. Eastwood played Will Munny, first encountered as a farmer and family man. Gradually, we learn about his past as a gunman. “I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another, and I'm here to kill you, Little Bill,” he tells old rival Gene Hackman. This brutal and elegiac film was always a shoo-in for its Oscar.

Rex Features

The 10 best Oscar Best Picture winners

1. The Apartment

Only Billy Wilder could have made a romantic comedy based around infidelity, drudgery and office politics and turned it into a film as delightful as this. Academy voters are sometimes accused of self-righteousness and prudery, but thankfully that didn’t stop them giving the best picture Oscar to The Apartment.

Rex Features

“What I want to interpret is that it is a matter of procedure,” he said. “It is a procedure that I want to do and that I have been denied by the interviewers that have touched me.

“I want to think that, because if we could find a way for a consular officer or someone in the embassy to read those letters of invitation, one could understand the artistic figure that I have and the cultural exchange that is taking place between two nations.”

Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events

Guerrero will try to have his visa approved before the Oscars take place 24 February.

Show 0 comments

Comments

Share your thoughts and debate the big issues

Please be respectful when making a comment and adhere to our Community Guidelines.

You may not agree with our views, or other users’, but please respond to them respectfully
Swearing, personal abuse, racism, sexism, homophobia and other discriminatory or inciteful language is not acceptable
Do not impersonate other users or reveal private information about third parties
We reserve the right to delete inappropriate posts and ban offending users without notification

You can find our Community Guidelines in full here.

Newest first
Oldest first
Most liked

There are no Independent Premium comments yet - be the first to add your thoughts

Please be respectful when making a comment and adhere to our Community Guidelines.

You may not agree with our views, or other users’, but please respond to them respectfully
Swearing, personal abuse, racism, sexism, homophobia and other discriminatory or inciteful language is not acceptable
Do not impersonate other users or reveal private information about third parties
We reserve the right to delete inappropriate posts and ban offending users without notification

You can find our Community Guidelines in full here.

Newest first
Oldest first
Most liked

There are no comments yet - be the first to add your thoughts