…Two AMAA Winners Selected
By Eva Irewole
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has announced the list of eligible films for the International Feature Films, Documentary and Animated categories.
Among the 92 films announced on Wednesday for the IFF, which used to be known as Best Foreign Language Film category, eight African films, two of which were honoured at the recent African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), crossed the eligibility hurdle.
The eight African films include Tanzania’s Tug Of War, which won five awards at the AMAAs on October 30, including Best Film and Best Film In An African Language as well as Uganda’s Tembele, which also picked AMAA’s Best Cinematography award.
Others are Cameroon’s The Planters Plantation, which stars Nigeria’s Nkem Owoh; Kenya’s ‘Tera Storm’; Senegal’s Xale; Tunisia’s Under The Fig Tree; Algeria’s Our Brothers and Morocco’s The Blue Caftan.
The eight films will slug it out with 84 other films from various parts of the world to get a slot among the 15 that will advance to the Shortlist stage.
About 1,100 Acadeny members are expected to vote in selecting the 15 films that will advance to the next stage.
The shortlist of 15 will be announced on December 21, 2022. It is out of the shortlisted 15 that five will ultimately be selected for nomination at the 95th Oscars which will hold on March 12, 2023.
Nigeria does not have any film for consideration after the Nigerian Oscar Selecting Committee (NOSC) failed to pick any of the three films submitted on the curious ground that they did not meet eligibility requirement.
But was a curious and controversial decision given that only the Academy reserved the power to determine film’s eligibility after it must have been recommended for consideration from its country of origin.
Twenty-seven films were also announced on Wednesday as being eligible for the Animated category while 144 films scaled the hurdle in the Documentary category.
