My Octopus Teacher, which documents a year spent by filmmaker Craig Foster forging a relationship with a wild common octopus in a South African kelp forest, has won the Oscar for best documentary at the 93rd Academy Awards, which took place in Los Angeles. The truimph comes after the film had already won a number of awards including both the Bafta and Producers Guild awards for best documentary. For the Oscar, the Netflix Original had to go against disability documentary Crip Camp, criminal justice system testimony Time, and corruption investigation Collective.

Released in 4 September 2020 on Millennium Docs Against Gravity and 7 September 2020 on Netflix, the film shows how, in 2010, Foster began free-diving in a cold underwater kelp forest at a remote location in False Bay, near Cape Town, South Africa. The location was near Simon’s Town on the Cape Peninsula, which is exposed to the cold Benguela current of the Atlantic Ocean.

Craig Foster, founder of the Sea Change Project was the subject, producer, and photographer of the film, which was directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed.