Oscars Academy Explains Action On ‘Lionheart’ After Nigerians’ Outrage On Twitter

Organizers of the Academy Awards, officially known as the Oscars, have justified their disqualification of Nigeria’s Oscar entry ‘Lionheart’ after coming under heavy criticism by Nigerians on Tuesday.

The Motion Picture Academy had announced Lionheart’s disqualification to voters on Monday for not meeting its requirement that films submitted in the international feature category must have “a predominantly non-English dialogue track”.

The development had generated mostly negative reactions from Nigerians and among movie lovers both locally and internationally.

But speaking in a statement published in Variety Magazine, the awards organizers maintained that ‘Lionheart’ did not qualify for the international category in which it was nominated because only about 11 minutes of the 95-minute film was not in English.

“In April 2019, we announced that the name of the Foreign Language Film category changed to International Feature Film. We also confirmed that the rules for the category would not change. The intent of the award remains the same — to recognize accomplishment in films created outside of the United States in languages other than English,” said the statement.

“As this year’s submitted films were evaluated, we discovered that ‘Lionheart’ includes only 11 minutes of non-English dialogue, which makes it ineligible for this award category,” the organisers said.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian Oscar Selection Committee had in reaction on Tuesday said filmmakers in the country were faced with the challenge of shooting movies “with non-English recording dialogue”.

The committee had described Lionheart’s disqualification as “an eye-opener” that should guide local filmmakers in the future.

In her reaction, Genevieve Nnaji, who directed the movie, said: “This movie represents the way we speak as Nigerians,” which she said “includes English which acts as a bridge between the 500+ languages spoken in our country.”

 “It’s no different to how French connects communities in former French colonies. We did not choose who colonized us. As ever, this film and many like it, is proudly Nigerian,” she said on Tuesday.