Long waits over amid historic firsts galore
THE 2024 Oscars clocked up a number of historic firsts and achievements.
Topping the bill was British film-maker Christopher Nolan, who ended his 22-year wait for an Academy Award.
Nolan was first nominated back in 2002, for best original screenplay for Memento, and again in 2011 in the same category for Inception, but on both occasions he came away empty-handed. In 2018 he was nominated for best director for Dunkirk, but once more walked away with nothing.
This year he finally triumphed, being named best director for Oppenheimer.
Nolan’s film was responsible for two more Oscar firsts.
Cillian Murphy, who played the title role of J Robert Oppenheimer – the American physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb – was named best actor, the first Irish winner of this award.
Robert Downey Jr also picked up his first Oscar when he won best supporting actor for his role in the film as Lewis Strauss.
Downey Jr had been waiting for an Academy Award for even longer than Nolan, having received his first acting nomination in 1993 for Chaplin.
Nolan’s fellow British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer helped make history when his movie The Zone of Interest became the first UK production to win the Oscar for best international feature.
The film, set in and around the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War, features dialogue that is mostly in German and Polish.
Another moment of history came when 20 Days in Mariupol was named best documentary feature, marking the first Oscar to be won by Ukraine.
The film, directed by Mstyslav Chernov, follows the story of people living under siege in the city of Mariupol during the first weeks of Russia’s invasion.
Japanese fantasy film The Boy and the Heron was named best animated feature.