South Africa’s documentary My Octopus Teacher has won an Oscar for Best Documentary.

The documentary is about a friendship between a diver and an octopus.

It followed South African free diver Craig Foster as he tracked a young octopus in her den in a kelp forest off the coast of Cape Town for nearly a year.

The film beat four other documentaries to emerge the best.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday wrote a letter to the team lauding them for their Oscar nomination which he termed as a first for a South African film.

The film won a British Academy Film Award – known as a Bafta – in early April.