Nigerian actress and producer Genevieve Nnaji’s hit movie, LIONHEART did not meet the Academy’s rules for international feature film submissions.
The movie which was Nigeria’s first and only hope of winning an award at the 2020 Oscars has been disqualified after failing to meet one of the requirements for selection.
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LIONHEART was disqualified on Monday because it contained too much English dialogue, leading to a backlash from its filmmaker, Nigerian actor-director Genevieve Nnaji, as well as from fellow helmer Ava DuVernay.
Lionheart is a Nigerian movie mainly done in English and Igbo language. It however appears that is not enough because the Academy requires a film to have “a predominantly non-English dialogue track” to be included in the Best International Feature Film category.
The disqualification of Lionheart from the Oscars race makes the movies competing in the category to be numbered 92 and also drops the number of female directors to 28.
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In different posts shared on her Twitter page, Genevieve reacted to the disqualification. According to her, Lionheart is very much a Nigerian movie even though it was predominantly done in English.
She added that English is the lingua in Nigeria as it brings together people in a country of over 500 languages.
See her tweets below:
DuVernay also slammed the decision in a tweet, saying…
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