Damien Chazelle’s Hollywood-set musical La La Land has won the Academy award for best picture – a victory that takes its total on the night to a total of seven wins.
The film, which stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, had been the strong favourite for the prize, and has duly seen off the competition.
Having premiered at the Venice film festival in 2016, La La Land had generated Oscar momentum straightaway, and had already won a plethora of best picture awards, including best musical and comedy at the Golden Globes, and best film at the Baftas, while securing a record-equalling 14 Academy Award nominations.
It defeated nine other films in the best picture race, including the widely acclaimed coming-of-age drama Moonlight and the commercially successful Hidden Figures, about black female mathematicians who worked on Nasa’s moon mission in the 1960s.
