Sir Sam Mendes has won big at this year's BAFTA film awards, taking home the Best Director award for directingh 1917, which also won best film.

The First World War epic also won Best British Film, taking Sir Sam's awards on the night to three.

"There's the personal delight in seeing a story very close to me and my family be developed and enlarged but the massive thing has been audiences going in large numbers," he told the BBC backstage.

In his acceptance speech, he said: "It's a war film but it's a film about home and family. So it's moving to me to get this in my hometown for the first time."

Sir Sam is nominated for three Oscars, which take place on February 9, for the film - Best Director, Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, which he co-wrote with Kirsty Wilson-Cairns.

Taiki Watiti, the Jeiwhs-Maori New Zealand filmmaker, won the Best Adapted Screenplay award for his screenplay for JoJo Rabbit, a comedy about a little boy who in Nazi Germany with Hitler for an imaginary friend.