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Nigeria will not be submitting a movie for the 2023 Oscars. The Nigerian Official Selection Committee (NOSC) for the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has confirmed.
Following its call for submissions last August, the committee received three epic films, but it turned out that none of them would advance to the next stage owing to the members voting patterns.
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 again could not find a film suitable for the award.
She stated: 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.
Anyaene-Abonyi, 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.
