Guillermo del Toro ruled at the 90th edition of the Academy Awards by wining the Oscars for Best Film and Best Director for The Shape of Water. The film, which had earned 13 nominations, won in four categories, also for Best Production Design and Best Original Score.
“I am an immigrant,” del Toro said in his acceptance speech, arguing that art had the power to “erase the lines in the sand” between people of different ethnicities. “We should continue doing that when the world tells us to make them deeper.”
Del Toro's win for Best Director marked the fourth time in the past five years that a Mexican filmmaker has won the statuette in the category after Alfonso Cuarón for Gravity in 2014, and Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman in 2015 and The Revenant in 2016.
Del Toro's statuettes also confirm the supremacy of the Mexican filmmakers in Hollywood. Famously nicknamed the 'Three Amigos'—after the three of them had earned nominations at the 2006 Oscars—Del Toro, Cuarón and Iñárritu have demonstrated their growing hegemony in the American film industry.
Other Latino winners of the evening included the Chilean film A Fantastic Woman by Sebastián Lelio for Best Foreign Language Film, the Mexican-inspired film Coco for Best Animated Film and the theme song "Recuérdame" was the winner of the Best Original Song.
The winners of the 90th Academy Awards were announced this evening at a ceremony in Hollywood, California.
