Los Angeles: Damien Chazelle became the youngest ever winner of a best directing Oscar on Sunday after picking up the prize for his third feature film, musical ‘La La Land’.


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It was the first Academy Award for Chazelle, 32, who was the favourite going into Sunday`s ceremony after winning Directors Guild and Golden Globe awards earlier this year.


‘La La Land’, a contemporary original musical, is set in Los Angeles and stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling as an aspiring actress and a tortured jazz musician who fall in love.


Chazelle thanked his girlfriend, actress Olivia Hamilton, while accepting his statuette.


"This was a movie about love and I was lucky enough to fall in love while making it," he said.


It took six years for Chazelle to find a studio willing to finance and take a gamble on ‘La La Land,’ which was conceived as a modern take on 1940s and 1950s Hollywood musicals. He also wrote the screenplay.


In 2015, Chazelle was nominated for a best adapted screenplay Oscar for his breakout film "Whiplash," about a young jazz drummer. That success helped catapult "La La Land" into production.


Chazelle started out as a jazz drummer at high school but later studied film at Harvard University.


He took the Oscar on Sunday over a field that included Denis Villeneuve for ‘Arrival’, Mel Gibson for ‘Hacksaw Ridge’, Kenneth Lonergan for ‘Manchester by the Sea’ and Barry Jenkins for ‘Moonlight’.