The Academy awards also officially and frequently called the Oscars have disqualified popular actress Geneveive Nnaji’s directed film “Lion Heart” from the Internatonal feature film category.
The actress submitted her film recently and got turned down on November 4 by the academy for not meeting the guidelines and features stated for that category.
The academy reported that the film Lion heart did not meet the necessary language requirement as the film had a predominantly English theme.
It was however reported this Monday November 4, that Geneveive Nnaji’s directorial debut film Lion Heart was disqualified by the Oscars in the Internatonal Feature
Film category for being in English.
However,the Nollywood actress had reacted on her Twitter Handle that the Film, Lion heart is purely a Nigerian Film where there was an infusion of the Igbo language and the English language. She defended that English was part of the Nigerian Language.
In her response to the tweet by @ava duvarney who questioned Oscars on why Nigerian’s ever first film submitted to the Oscars was disqualified since English is an official language of Nigerians.
Genevieve replied that “Indeed English is our Official Language and it acts as a bridging gap between the 500+ languages spoken in our country thereby making us #one Nigeria; the film and many like it is proudly Nigerian”
However several reactions from the academy points to the fact that the International feature film category for which the film was submitted has its certain guidelines and laws and portends the fact that it must be in a local language.
Lion heart is a Nigerian movie which has the Igbo language and the English language as its theme it appears this falls short of the academy’s requirement for the International feature film category which requires a film to have a non- English theme.
The Oscars basically is an internatonal recognized award for artistic and technical merit in the Film industry.
