Latin America As Told Through Its Oscar-Winning Films

2. Argentina – La Historia Oficial & El Secreto de Sus Ojos

Argentina was the first Latin American country to claim an Oscar with La Historia Oficial (The Official Story) in 1985. It is a film that does not flinch. A mother in Buenos Aires, cocooned in privilege, begins to suspect that her adopted daughter may be the child of a desaparecido – one of the thousands who vanished without trace under Argentina’s last military dictatorship. A slow, devastating unravelling follows, peering behind closed doors to the horrors that lurk beyond.

Fast-forward to 2009, when Argentina triumphed again with El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes), a masterpiece of a crime thriller that leaps between past and present as a retired judiciary employee revisits an unsolved murder. The film is labyrinthine, but it is one scene that sticks in the memory – a single, unbroken shot through a heaving Huracán football stadium. It is truly audacious cinema, and captures Buenos Aires in all its contradiction and impossible energy.

In the Argentine capital, the past is palpable in its architecture: its Parisian-style palaces from the Belle Époque, modernist towers born from mid-century optimism, once-opulent neighbourhoods now patched up with quick fixes, their faded grandeur reflecting the country’s fragile economy. To trace its history, start at the Casa Rosada, where Juan and Eva Perón once stirred the passes, the crowds, and continue to the Plaza de Mayo, where the Madres de Plaza de Mayo still march weekly, demanding justice for their disappeared children. Walk through San Telmo, where 19th-century townhouses now house antique dealers and tango dancers, or take in the grandeur of Recoleta Cemetery.

But for all its ghosts, Buenos Aires is fiercely alive, and the city pulses with artistry and irreverence. Catch an avant-garde play at Teatro Timbre 4, sip vermouth in a hidden speakeasy at Florería Atlántico, or hunt for rare vinyl at Exiles Records. Join a cena clandestina, an underground dinner party in a stranger’s home, or dance until dawn in a villa-turned-nightclub in Palermo. Whether it’s poetry readings in bookshops, live jazz in warehouse bars, or spontaneous tango in the streets of San Telmo, Buenos Aires never stands still. 

4. Mexico – Roma

With Roma (2018), Mexico’s Alfonso Cuarón delivered a masterpiece – an intimate, luminous portrait of Cleo, an Indigenous domestic worker in a middle-class household in 1970s Mexico City. Shot in black and white with a documentary-style lens, Roma captures Cleo’s world, the resistance of a woman in the face of forces beyond her control. The film won three Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Cinematography.

Travellers to Mexico City can step into the world that inspired Cuarón’s vision. The city’s divisions, like those in Roma, are inescapable. Visit Chapultepec Castle, once the grand residence of emperors and presidents, and contrast it with Tlatelolco, where the Plaza de las Tres Culturas tells Mexico’s true story: an Aztec city razed by the Spanish, a colonial church built on its ruins. The Museo Nacional de Antropología showcases Mexico’s Indigenous heritage – one often celebrated in art and tourism yet ignored in daily life, as Roma so poignantly reveals.

For a lighter experience, walk in Cleo’s footsteps through the leafy boulevards of Colonia Roma, stopping for an espresso at Cafebrería El Péndulo, a bookstore-café set in a converted townhouse, or browsing contemporary Mexican art at Galería OMR. Get lost in the sensory chaos of Mercado de la Merced, or slip into Café de Tacuba, a century-old institution where waiters in white jackets serve thick hot chocolate beneath stained-glass windows. In Tepito, seek out a pulquería where pulque – once reserved for Aztec priests – is still poured thick and frothy. And when night falls, follow the neon glow to Arena México, where masked wrestlers hurl themselves from the ropes to the roar of the crowd.

5. Peru – La Teta Asustada

While never a winner, La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow, 2009) remains Peru’s only Oscar-nominated film to date – and one of the most defiantly un-Hollywood films ever recognised by the Academy.

Directed by Claudia Llosa, the film explores a uniquely Peruvian folk belief: la teta asustada is said to afflict children conceived during traumatic events, with sufferers believed to be ‘born without a soul’. The film’s protagonist Fausta carries in her body the pain of her mother’s suffering under the brutal years of the Sendero Luminoso insurgency.

La Teta Asustada goes far beyond Peru’s touristic gloss, into the realities of its indigenous communities and experiences. For a deeper exploration of Indigenous culture in Lima, the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI) houses an extraordinary collection of pre-Columbian ceramics and textiles, and the Museo Pedro de Osma offers a glimpse into the Andean Baroque traditions that shaped Peru’s visual identity. A visit to the Lugar de la Memoria provides powerful context on Peru’s modern struggles. In the Sacred Valley, Ollantaytambo’s ALQA Museo showcases Indigenous artistic expression through historic and contemporary works, while the Indigenous Amazonian Art Centre offers an immersive look into the visual traditions of the Amazon’s many ethnic groups. Encounters with Indigenous weavers in Cusco’s Centro de Textiles Tradicionales reveal centuries-old craftsmanship passed down through generations.

To truly get a grip on CDMX’s creative soul, go beyond its grand neighbourhoods. In Coyoacán, the blue walls of Casa Azul guard Frida Kahlo’s world of personal letters, unfinished canvases, traditional rebozos. Nearby, Diego Rivera’s Anahuacalli museum stands as a tribute to the Indigenous cultures that shaped his vision.