Last night the belles of Roma, Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira, were honored at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. Opening-night screening, big media deluge, q & a with Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg, general hoo-hah.

I ran into Yalitza and Marina yesterday afternoon in the lobby of Savannah’s Brice Hotel, where the festival organizers have graciously installed me for something like the fourth of fifth time.

(l. to r.) Roma costars Marina de Tavira, Yalitza Aparicio, Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg during last night’s post-screening q & a.

Marina is the beating, persistent, never-say-die heart of Roma. She generates this and more without once resorting to “acting” or “selling”, and because of this and other subtle reasons she easily warrants a Best Supporting Actress nomination.

Yalitza’s performance, which is Bresson-like in that she’s not a trained actress and is playing a kind of wordless, silent saint in the spiritual vein of Au hasard, Balthazar, is also stirring the Best Actress conversation pot.

From “Roma Mama,” posted on 9.11.18: “During last night’s post-premiere Roma party I spoke to Marina de Tavira, the prominent Mexico City-based stage and screen actress who plays Sofia, the spirited if frustrated mother of the family that that Alfonso Cuaron‘s ’70s-era drama is focused upon.

“Marina has played the female lead in a Mexico City stage production of Harold Pinter‘s Betrayal, she told me, and is currently preparing to star in a local stage production of David Hare‘s Skylight, which I saw performed in Manhattan three years ago with Carey Mulligan.