The Shape of Water wins the Oscar race 

The Shape of Water won the Oscar for Best Picture at the 90^th Academy Awards, overcoming heavy competition from Get Out, Lady Bird and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. This was considered to be the closest Oscar race for this category in many years.

The Shape of Water also received the maximum number of nominations, being nominated in 13 categories. It stars Sally Hawkins as a mute cleaner working in a Cold War-era lab facility, who bonds with a sea creature being kept there. 

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro also received the Best Director award for the film, winning over Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), Jordan Peele (Get Out), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), and Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread). Notably, Guillermo earlier won the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for directing the film. 

In his acceptance speech, he said: "I am an immigrant like Alfonso and Alejandro, my compadres. Like Gael (Garcia Bernal), like Salma (Hayek) and like many, many of you. And in the last 25 years, I've been living in a country all of our own. Part of it is here, part of it is in Europe, part of it is everywhere. Because I think that the greatest thing our art does and our industry does is to erase the lines in the sand. We should continue doing that when the world tells us to make them deeper."

The Shape of Water's production designer trio Paul Austerberry, Jeffrey A Melvin and Shane Vieau, won the Best Production Design award. It was their very first Academy Award nomination. 

Alexandre Desplat took home Best Original Score award for his warm and melodic music for The Shape of Water. It was the second Academy Award for the French composer. Desplat won over the first-time nominee Jonny Greenwood (Phantom Thread), the previously nominated Carter Burwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), and the two previous Oscar winners Hans Zimmer (Dunkirk) and John Williams (Star Wars: The Last Jedi).

Overall, The Shape of Water made a clean sweep at the Oscars grabbing four awards out of a total of 13 nominations. It was closely followed by Christopher Nolan's war film Dunkirk which won three awards in the Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Editing categories.