Christopher Nolan has won the best director Oscar for Oppenheimer at the Academy Awards, currently taking place in Los Angeles.

This is the first time Nolan has won the award, having previously been nominated for Dunkirk in 2018. He was considered the strong favourite for the statuette, having won a series of best director awards in the run-up to the Oscars, including a Golden Globe, Bafta, Critics Choice award and Directors Guild of America prize. At the Oscars, Nolan saw off a strong field, which included Martin Scorsese (for Killers of the Flower Moon), Justine Triet (for Anatomy of a Fall) and Yorgos Lanthimos (for Poor Things).

Oppenheimer, which Nolan also produced and wrote, stars Cillian Murphy as the pioneering nuclear scientist J Robert Oppenheimer, director of the secret Los Alamos laboratory that designed and built the first atomic bombs. The film received considerable acclaim on release: the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw gave it a four-star review while the Observer’s Wendy Ide called it a “towering achievement”. Yoked with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie using the hashtag #Barbenheimer, the film became a significant commercial hit, with total revenue currently recorded at $960.6m.

Nolan thanked the cast and crew of the film, as well as his wife and producer, Emma Thomas. He reflected that the medium of film is only just over a century old; for the Academy to “know you think I’m a meaningful part of it means the world to me”.

Read more about the 2024 Oscars:

• Here’s our news wrap and full list of winners – now read Peter Bradshaw’s verdict
• Al Pacino, British mothers and a codpiece envelope: the real winners and losers of the night
• Relive how the ceremony unfolded with our liveblog and get up to speed with the top viral moments and the best quotes of the night
• Have a gander at how the stars looked on the red carpet and at the show