Following the first nomination of the movie ‘Lionheart’ at the Oscars, the Academy has disqualified Nigeria’s “Lionheart” from the Oscar race in the Best International Feature Film category, dropping the number of films competing for the award to 92 from what had been a record 93 entries.
Lionheart was disqualified for having too much indigenous language dialogue on it.
This has raised issues on social media being that English is the official language of Nigeria.
This year’s field is now tied with 2017’s as the largest in the category’s history. Since “Lionheart” was made by actress-turned-director Genevieve Nnaji, its disqualification drops the number of female directors in this year’s race to 28, which is still a category record.
It was the first film ever submitted to the Oscars by Nigeria.
But looking at the criteria set by the Academy in this category, what do you think?
Meanwhile, actress and director Genevieve Nnaji has reacted to the news of the disqualification saying that the language was basically how Nigerians interact on a daily basis.