Latino Filmmakers Get Nominations In Almost Every Major Oscar Category

We’re still getting over our Golden Globes hangover (hey, live-tweeting our kudos and “hell, no’s!” is serious business), but we’ve just had a little hair of the dog: the 2015 Academy Award nominations have been announced. So it’s time to start working on your Oscar lotería card.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman leads the pack (along with Grand Budapest Hotel) with nine nominations including Best Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay. Birdman also scored some acting nominations in the supporting categories and Emmanuel “el chivo” Lubezki locked in his seventh Best Cinematography nod. The French-Brazilian documentary The Salt of the Earth has been nominated for Best Documentary Feature, and Argentina’s Wild Tales is in the running for Best Foreign Language Film.

Alfonso Cuarón, who’s nabbed almost every major filmmaking award in the last two years, took to the podium to announce the nominees with fellow director J.J. Abrams. Though there’s usually only a famous duo doing the honors, the Academy added an additional pair this year (actor Chris Pine and Academy President Boone Isaacs) because for first time, all of the nominees in all of the categories were read on live TV/stream.

Check out our list of Latino nominees below.

Hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, the 2015 Academy Awards are February 22 and broadcast on ABC at 7PM ET/4PM PT.

UPDATE: 1/15/15 at 2:00PM

And while we’re thrilled for these Latin American nominees, we’re obviously dismayed at the overall lack of diversity in the nominations. For the first time in nearly 20 years, all of the nominees in all of the acting categories are white. That’s unthinkable following a year with impressive performances from Oscar Isaac in A Most Violent Year and David Oleyowo in Selma. Women in general fared poorly as well, seeing nominations only in the categories with the feminine diminutive; this in spite of Ava DuVernay’s inspired directing in Selma.

This list of nominees doesn’t represent the face of the country, but it does reflect the industry. Latin@s make up 17% of the U.S. population and 32% of regular moviegoers, but Alexander Dinelaris is the only American-born Latino nominated. Latin Americans had a stronger showing in the directing, cinematography, foreign film, and documentary categories — but the argument could still be made that they are all, technically, white men (Latino is not a race after all.) So while the Academy remains overwhelmingly made up of older, white males and we have directors balking at casting non-whites, the Oscars are always going to be a bit of a disappointment.