1. José Ferrer: Nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, 1948, Won Best Actor Award, 1950, Nominated for Best Actor Award, 1952
Puerto Rican actor José Ferrer was the first Latin American to gain recognition at the Academy Awards with his nomination for Best Actor in a SupportingRole in Joan of Arc (1948) in which he starred in alongside Ingrid Bergman. However, just two years later, Ferrer became the first Latino to win an Academy award, taking home the Best Actor in a Leading Role for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in the film of the same name (1950). Two years later, he was nominated for his role in Moulin Rouge (1952).
2. The Official Story: Latin America's First Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Award, 1985
The Official Story (La Historia Oficial) was the first Latin American film to win for Best Foreign Language Film. The film, which tells the story of an upper class mother living in Buenos Aires who discover that her adopted daughter may be the biological child of one of the ‘desaparecidos’ from Argentina’s last military dictatorship, was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay. In addition to its success at the Academy Awards, the film also won several international awards, including the Interfilm Award at Berlin International Film Festival and the Best Actress Award for Norma Aleandro at Cannes Film Festival.
3. Benicio del Toro: Won Best Actor in a Supporting Role Award, 2000, nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, 2003.
World-renowned actor Benicio del Toro also hails from Puerto Rico and has won a plethora of awards which include Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and Screen Actors Guild Awards. However, in 2000 del Toro won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of police officer Javier Rodriguez in the film Traffic (2000). This was the first – and to date, the only – time these awards were given to someone for a Spanish speaking role. Three years later, he was nominated for the same category for his role in 21 Grams.
4. Jorge Drexler - the first Latin America to win Oscar for Best Original Song
In 2005 Uruguayan singer song-writer, Jorge Drexler, was the first to win an Oscar for a song not sung in English when grabbed the award for his song El Otro Lado del Rio from The Motorcycle Diaries. The decision was not without controversy, and his acceptance speech even more so. Because the Uruguayan was unknown in the US, the producers of the show didn’t want to let him sing his song at the ceremony, as is customary for the nominees for best song.
“At first they asked Marc Anthony and J-Lo to do a duet of the song. Then, to my relief, they ask Santana and Antonio Banderas; at least he rang me and asked me how I felt about it,” recalls Jorge. “I knew Hollywood wasn’t happy with the fact I was nominated. That year Mick Jagger had a song in a film and people were shocked he didn’t make it, so they ordered a recount of the votes.”
What happened next surprised everyone. On receiving his award on stage from Prince, the Uruguayan sang 30 seconds of the song he hadn’t been allowed to sing, then said thank you and left the stage. The following day it was voted the best acceptance speech of the Oscars.
5. Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and the Start of the Mexican Invasion
Pan’s Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) was one of the 79th Academy Awards most loved films. With three wins (Best Art Direction Award, Best Cinematography and Best Makeup Award) and three nominations (Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay and Best Foreign Language Film), the Spanish-Mexican film was dubbed by The Observer as the best film of 2006. Set in post-civil war Spain, the film weaves together fiction and reality through the story of Ofelia, who has to face the tasks of an intricate labyrinth whilst facing the wrath of her sadist stepfather, and hoping to cure her ailing pregnant mother.
This was Mexican director Guillermos del Toro's first nomination as director showcasing his distinct style of telling stories and playing with fantasy. In 2017, Guillermo del Toro was back with his acclaimed film, Shape of Water, taking home two of the major categories: Best Picture and Best Director. Now he is looking at the prospect of getting his third Oscar with the animated movie Pinocchio.
Remarkably, this film was shot by the same cinematographer, Felix Monti, that had worked on the only other Latin American Oscar winning film to date, The Official Version, 30 years earlier. The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos) is a fantastic crime story directed, produced and edited by Juan Jose Campanella, based on Eduardo Sacheri's novel. The story unearths the buried romance between a retired judiciary employee and a judge who worked together a quarter century ago. They recount their efforts on an unsolved 1974 rape and murder that is an obsession not only for them, but for the victim's husband and the killer.
Outstanding performances by Ricardo Darin and Soledad Villamil, brought alive a film with multiple layers, historical, political and romantic, that one amost forgets what a darn great yarn it is. Both gripping and humourous to the end, various scenes, such as the stunning one from the fan filled Huracán football stadium, where they finally catch the killer, will stay wth you for year. Don't worry, I haven't spoiled it, that’s just the beginning of a film with more twists than a formula 1 race track. So good is the original, that is has survived a Hollywood remake, obviously not a patch on this masterpiece.
7. Gravity (2014) and History in Mexican Hands
In 2014, Space-epic Gravity was nominated for ten different awards and took home seven - Best Cinematography, Best Director, Best Visual Effects, Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Original Score - becoming the film that has received the second highest amount of Academy Awards (Cabaret (1972) is the first). Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón took home the award for Best Director. Gravity stunned audiences and critics alike...thanks again to the above mentioned goat.
And this is just the beginning....Alfonso Cuarón goes on to become the Latin American who has been nominated for the most Academy Awards. Alfonso Cuarón came back with 'Roma' in 2018, which was a black-and-white film about the housekeeper of a middle-class family in 1970s Mexico City. Roma took home three awards, including best director, best foreign film, and best cinematography.
8. Battle of the Mexican Directors
Long before international fame arrived his debut film, Amores Perros in 2000, Alejandro G. Iñárritu opened a new door to Latino films in the Hollywood industry, winning different awards, including the BAFTA for best foreign film and being nominated for the Academy Award. Born in Mexico City, director and screenwriter Alejandro G. Iñárritu made history by winning two consecutive years' major categories with Birdman in 2014 and The Revenant in 2015. In total, Iñárritu has taken four Oscars home, but Cuarón has taken four times as many as Iárritu, both are the Latinos with the most Oscar victories.
9. The Goat and King Maker - Emmanuel Lubezki, Best Cinematographer (2014, 2015, 2016)
Who the hell is 'El Chivo'?...is what everybody was asking at the Oscars for three years in a row. This mythical figure, presumably who either looks like a goat or wears a goatie, was on everybody's lips, mentioned by multiple Oscar winners when receiving their awards, from Leonardo di Caprio to George Clooney.
Perhaps they couldn't pronounce the name of Mexican cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki - one of the most frequently found names in the list of nominees in recent years - nominated eight times, and winning the last three times.
In addition, Lubezki is the first cinematographer ever to win three consecutive Oscar awards – for Gravity (2014), Birdman (2015) and The Revenant (2016) - and in the process making Oscar kings of both Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Birdman
And yes he definitively looks like a goat.
10. La Hora de los Chilenos...
Something was afoot in 2015 when Bear Story, a Chilean short film animated by Gabriel Osorio Vargas, recently became the first Latin American short animated film to be nominated and win the Best Animated Short film award. But this was just the tip of the iceberg...a very talented group of Chilean directors began to leap onto the Oscar scene. Pablo Larraín made 4 Academy Award-nominated films No (2012), Neruda (2016), Jackie (2016) and Spencer (2021).
Finally Larrain got an Oscar in 2018 , not for a film he directed but one he produced for fellow Chilean director Sebastián Lelio. A Fantastic Woman was the first Chilean film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. What hat was remarkable was that a film about young transgender woman should come out of one of the most socially conservative countries in Latin America, and as such was able to propel change where some thought was the last place it would happen
Lupita Nyong’o: Won Best Actress in a Supporting Role, 2013
Yup, we're claiming this one. When the multi-award-winning film 12 Years a Slave took home three Oscars in 2013, one of the awards went to Mexican-born Kenyan Lupita Nyong’o for best supportng actress. This not only made her the first Mexican actress to win an Academy Awards, but also the first Kenyan Actress to do so. Nyong’o’s future in the cinematic industry is still growing from strength to strength, as she is set to star in two long awaited releases over the next two years – The Jungle Book (2016) and Star Wars: Episode VIII (2017).
- Fernando Ferreira Meirelles, Brazilian film director, producer and screenwriter was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for City of God. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director in 2005 for The Constant Gardener, which garnered the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Rachel Weisz.
- Chilean cinemographer Claudio Miranda won an Oscar for Life of Pi
- Beatrice De Alba won for best make up in Frida
- Best Original Score went to an Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla ifor Broke Back Mountain and for Babel
- Another Argentine composer Luis Bacalov won for Best Original Score for Il Postino
Think of any others? Let us know!
