THE SHAPE OF WATER sweeps over 90th Oscars

Guillermo Del Toro's fantasy romance “The Shape of Water”, about a mute cleaning woman falling in love with a sea creature, backed up its 13 nominations at the 90th Academy Awards, taking back four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.

Best Supporting Actress Allison Janey

Jimmy Kimmel hosted the politically-charged ceremony in light of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements along with support for immigrants and minorities at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California, where Frances McDormand's portrayal of a revenge-stricken mother of a murdered rape victim in “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” won her Best Actress and Gary Oldman's transformation into Winston Churchill for “Darkest Hour” earned him Best Actor. McDormand beat out stiff competition from the likes of Sally Hawkins (“Shape of Water”), 21-time nominee Meryl Streep (“The Post”), Margot Robbie (“I, Tonya”) and Saoirse Ronan (“Lady Bird”), while Oldman edged out heavyweights like Daniel Day-Lewis (“Phantom Thread”) and Denzel Washington (“Roman J. Israel, Esq.”) and young talent like the 22-year old Timothée Chalamet (“Call Me by Your Name”) and Daniel Kaluuya (“Get Out”).

“I want to dedicate this, to every young filmmaker, the youth that is showing us how things are done. Really, they are. In every country in the world,” Del Toro said in his speech, who became the fourth Mexican in the last five years to win Best Director (alongside Alfonso Cuaron “for Gravity” and Alejandro G. Iñárritu for “Birman” and “The Revenant”).

The two other awards for “Shape of Water” were in the Best Production Design and Best Original Score categories. Christopher Nolan's World War II classic “Dunkirk” won three awards, all of them in technical categories: Film Editing, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing. Legendary cinematographer Roger A Deakins (“The Shawshank Redemption”, “No Country For Old Men”, 'Skyfall”) finally won a Best Cinematographer Oscar, on his 14th nomination, for “Blade Runner 2048”. The film also won Best Visual Effects. Among other record wins, James Ivory became the oldest competitive Oscar winner, for his adapted screenplay for “Call Me By Your Name”, while Jordan Peele became the first African-American to win Best Original Screenplay for his debut “Get Out”, marking the only statuette for the film out of its four nods.

Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney picked up the Best Actor and Actress in Supporting Roles respectively, for “Three Billboards” and “I, Tonya”.

Best Foreign Language film went to “A Fantastic Woman” from Chile, while “Icarus” from Russia was named best documentary, also marking the first Oscar for streaming service Netflix. The Makeup & Hairstyling Oscar went to “Darkest Hour” for Oldman's transformation into the iconic British Prime Minister, while “Phantom Thread” expectedly took the Best Costume Design award. “Coco” won the Best Animated Feature award as well as the Best Original Song award for “Remember Me”, while basketball legend Kobe Bryant picked up and Oscar for co-creating the Best Animated Short “Dear Basketball”. The win sparked some backlash on Twitter, especially with sexual harassment of women being such a major talking point in Hollywood over the year. Bryant was accused in 2003 of sexual assault.

Best Actor winner Gary Oldman (below) at the ceremony

Among the biggest snubs of the ceremony as “Lady Bird”, Greta Gerwig's coming-of-age drama that was nominated for five Oscars: including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actress. Period drama “Mudbound” also went home empty-handed despite four nods to its name. Steven Spielberg's heavyweight “The Post” also lost out on both its nominations – for Best Picture and Best Actress.

Pearl Jam front-man Eddie Vedder made a surprise appearance at the ceremony, to soundtrack this year's In Memorium segment with Tom Petty's “Room at the Top”. The list honoured actors, musicians, technicians, writers and producers not just from Hollywood but from across the world, from Roger Moore, Don Rickles and George Romero to French screen legend Jeanne Moreau, Burkinabe filmmaker Idrissa Ouedraogo, Japanese actress Haruko Nakajima, and Bollywood's Shashi Kapoor and Sridevi.