By Vanessa Obioha
The Nigerian Official Selection Committee (NOSC) for the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has announced that it will not be submitting a movie for the 2023 Oscars.
Although the Committee received three epic films following its call for submissions last August, it turned out that none of them will advance to the next stage owing to the voting patterns of members.
In a session that lasted two hours on September 3, 2023, the NOSC recorded a voting chart of 8:5:1:1 from its 15 members – with “No Film is Eligible” taking the lead.
This is the second year in a row that Nigeria would not be submitting a film for the International Feature Film (IFF) category of the Oscars, the last submission being “The Milkmaid” in 2020.
Chairperson of NOSC, Chineze Anyaene-Abonyi, who had since communicated the development to the AMPAS, expressed regret that the Committee could not, again, find a film suitable for the award.
Anyaene-Abonyi stated that “Nigerian films had, no doubt, improved significantly as the awareness of the requirements has since grown among filmmakers, and potentially soon, we just might be bringing this award home in succession.” She however implored filmmakers to “get more acquainted with Oscars-nominated films in the IFF category so as to achieve the needed international recognition and put our films in its acclaimed level of creative discourse.”
The IFF award is presented annually by the Academy to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United States that contains 50 percent or more of non-English dialogue.
