Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu was the big winner at last night’s Oscars, taking home the award for best director, while “Birdman,” his comic meditation on midlife crisis and making a comeback, received the prize for best picture.

This is the second year in a row that the awards for Best Picture and Best Director went to a Mexican and shows a growing trend in the success of Mexican directors.

Mexican directors, though getting all their attention fairly recently, have been working since the late 1980s, a time when the entertainment industry in Mexico was in a sad state, Global Post reports.

Arturo Aguilar, a Mexican film critic, described the time period.

"There was no variety of films and few options for talent. The industry was dominated by telenovelas and cheaply made films about escort bars," Arguilar explained.

Aguilar went on to say that directors such as Gonzalez Inarritu and del Toro "began making new interesting films about issues such as HIV, experimental horror films or dramas with different storytelling techniques."

Their work in what has been called "New Mexican Cinema" eventually led them, in the 1990s, to Hollywood, and to a slew of enviable Oscars.

This current display of great Mexican directors working in Hollywood makes Sean Penn’s “Who gave this son of a b*itch a green card?” joke regarding Gonzalez Inarritu all the more out of line. In truth, it has been obvious for a while that Mexican directors have been making their mark.

Last year, Alfonso Cuaron's "Gravity" got a lot of honor and even earned $716 million at the box office.

Emmanuel Lubezki, a director of Cinematography, has now won two Academy Awards, one for “Gravity” and one for “Birdman.”

Guillermo del Toro, who with 2006’s "Pan’s Labyrinth" is no stranger to Oscar wins and nominations and won numerous effects awards for his 2013 sci-fi sea monster film "Pacific Rim."

Plus, movies like “Brokeback Mountain” and "Argo" have greatly benefited from the cinematography of Rodrigo Prieto.

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