The excitement that many people have shared over having a Nigerian film, ‘LionHeat’, at the Oscar was cut short on Monday when the movie produced by Genevieve Nnaji was disqualified.
The reason given for this tends to border on a standard rule but is nevertheless dramatic, which has made Genevieve to react.
According to the academy, ‘LionHeart’, was disqualified on Monday November 4 for having too much English dialogue.
Ironically, some people had queried Genevieve for allowing what they considered too many Igbo expressions in the movie.
‘LionHeart’, which features, among other top actors, Genevieve, Pete Edochie and Nkem Owoh,
was submitted for the International Feature Film Oscar Category.
According to the academy, however, an international feature film “is a feature-length motion picture (defined as over 40 minutes) produced outside the United States of America with a predominantly non-English dialogue track.”
What is not clear is whether or not Genevieve had this information before submitting the work for the category.
The quantum of Igbo dialogue in the film is said to be 12 minutes as against English that is 94 minutes.
Perhaps the rule is only opening the door for movies in the indigenous languages, depending on how well such are made.
But Genevieve does not seem to find the disqualification funny.
In a reaction on Twitter, she notes: “This movie represents the way we speak as Nigerians. This includes English which acts as a bridge between the 500+ languages spoken in our country; thereby making us #OneNigeria.” She added, “It’s no different to how French connects communities in former French colonies. We did not choose who colonised us. As ever, this film and many like it, is proudly Nigerian.”
She has a supporter in American filmmaker who directed the Netflix drama miniseries, ‘When They See Us’, Ava DuVernay, who also tweets: “To @TheAcademy, You disqualified Nigeria’s first-ever submission for Best International Feature because it’s in English. But English is the official language of Nigeria. Are you barring this country from ever competing for an Oscar in its official language?”
The disqualification, no doubt, will raise a lot of questions, among which is the status of English in the context of the Oscar rule and the preparedness of producers of indigenous-
language films to take advantage of it.
