LOS ANGELES: British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan won his first Academy Award on Sunday (March 10), scooping best director for his historical drama “Oppenheimer” about a physicist behind the development of the atomic bomb during the Second World War.
Nolan’s film won 7 Oscars after previously dominating with 13 best nominations.
Nolan is favored to win the Oscar after picking up best director honors at this year’s Golden Globes, BAFTA, Critics Choice and Directors Guild of America.
Nolan also wrote the screenplay for “Oppenheimer” and produced the film with his wife Emma Thomas. He has been nominated for 13 Oscar nominations, including best picture and best actor for Cillian Murphy, who plays J. Robert Openheimer, known as the “father of the atomic bomb”.
“Oppenheimer’s story is one of the most dramatic I know and there are many aspects to it that make it so compelling,” Nolan told Reuters before the film’s premiere last summer.
Oppenheimer headed the secret Los Alamos Laboratory, founded under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the Manhattan Project to create the first atomic bomb. He supervised the detonation of the first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert, codenamed “Trinity”, before the weapon was used in the bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The film has earned over $957 million at the global box office.
Nolan is known for his cerebral films and was first nominated for an Oscar for his screenwriting in 2002 for “Memento,” which he also directed. He was nominated for best director in 2019 for the Second World War film “Dunkirk.”
