‘Oppenheimer’ shines at the 96th Academy Awards

The 96th Oscar Award Ceremony took place at Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, California, on March 10, 2024. Hollywood's biggest night concluded with Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ bagging seven important awards in the form of Best Actor, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Picture and three more. 

The biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist known for his contribution in development of the first nuclear bomb, released last year, received critically acclaimed and rave reviews all over the world and became the third highest grossing film of the year. It expectedly bagged the highest 13 nominations in various categories this year at the Oscars. The second film which got 11 nominations this year was Yorgos Lanthimos’s film ‘Poor Things’. 

The evening saw many firsts with director Christopher Nolan finally getting his first award as best director post getting nominated eight times in this particular category. Irish actor Cillian Murphy, who had worked with Nolan five times before doing the ‘Oppenheimer’ biopic, won his first Oscar for his role. It was after nearly 30 years that actor Robert Downey Jr received his first nomination and award for Supporting Actor for ‘Oppenheimer’. The winner of Best Supporting Actor in female category Da' Vine Joy Randolph also received her first Academy Award. Her role in the ‘The Holdover’ was highly appreciated and the actress got emotional while giving a speech on the stage.

Actress Emma Stone grabbed the trophy for the second time as a Best Actress. She was nominated for her film ‘Poor Things’. Prior to this she got her first Oscar Award for ‘La La Land’ in 2016.

The show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel for the fourth time had some interesting performances from Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas on the song ‘What Was I Made For’ from the movie ‘Barbie’, which also won an award in Best Song section. Apart from this, John Cena’s nude appearance on stage to present the best costume award raised many eyebrows. Jon Bastie, too, performed on his song ‘It Never Went Away’ and left the audience teary eyed in the end. Becky G made her debut at the Academy Award with her song ‘The Fire Inside’. The star performer of the night was Ryan Gosling, clad in a pink suit as his character Ken from the film ‘Baribe’. His act on ‘I’m Just Ken’ with Slash, Simu, Liu, Ncuti Gatwa brought a smile on everyone’s face.

Sadly, India’s only hope in this year’s Academy Award – Nisha Pahuja’s ‘To Kill A Tiger’, which was.  nominated under Best Documentary Feature film and was backed by Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Dev Patel and many noted personalities – could not win an award. Ukrainian documentary film ‘20 Days In Mariupol’ was declared the winners in this section.

The Oscars also played tribute to a noted Art Director and Production Designer Nitin Chandrakant Desai in a special video. Desai, who ended his life in his Karjat Studio last year, was part of Oscar winning film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.

Here is a list of winners of the Oscar Awards 2024: 

Best picture: Oppenheimer

Best director: Christopher Nolan

Best actor: Cillian Murphy

Best actress: Emma Stone

Best supporting actor: Robert Downey Jr

Best supporting actress: Da’Vine Joy Randolph

Best original score: Oppenheimer

Best original song: What Was I Made For?

Best international feature: The Zone of Interest

Best documentary feature: 20 Days in Mariupol

Best film editing: Oppenheimer

Best cinematography: Oppenheimer