Lionheart Disqualified From Nigeria's Oscars Awards, Genevieve Reacts

Oscars Awards Academy has disqualifies ‘Lionheart’ for having 'too much English' dialogue.

‘Lionheart’ the 2018 film which was directed by Nollywood icon Genevieve Nnaji has been disqualified by the Academy from the 2020 Oscar race. 

‘Lionheart’ was Genevieve’s directorial debut and she also starred in the film alongside popular Nollywood names like Nkem Owoh, Pete Edochie, Onyeka Onwenu, Kanayo O. Kanayo and Nigerian rapper Phyno.  

It was revealed in October that the Nigerian Oscars Selection Committee (NOSC) had picked the movie as Nigeria’s submission to the Best International Feature Film category of the 2020 Oscars. 

It was the first film ever submitted to the Oscars by Nigeria.

All hopes of making it to the final nominees have however been dashed as the Academy disqualified the movie from the Best International Feature Film category. 

Reports shows that the Academy announced the disqualification of ‘Lionheart’ to voters in the category in an email on Monday, November 4, 2019. 

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It has been revealed that ‘Lionheart’ was not vetted by the Academy’s International Feature Film Award Executive Committee when the NOSC first picked the film. 

After a recent viewing, the Academy deemed the film to have too much English dialogue and disqualified it from the Best International Feature Film category which until this year was known as Best Foreign Language Film.

‘Lionheart’ is partially in the Igbo language of Nigeria but it is mostly in English. 

However, Genevieve was not pleased with the disqualification and took to Twitter to express her feeling of disapproval. 

“I am the director of Lionheart. This movie represents the way we speak as Nigerians,” she said in a series of tweets. 

“This includes English which acts as a bridge between the 500+ languages spoken in our country; thereby making us 'OneNigeria'.