"Dahomey" is More Important to Me than "Emilia Pérez"

 

"Dahomey" is More Important to Me than "Emilia Pérez" 

I have ignored posting on the nominees for the 97th Academy Awards, because I was disappointed that Mati Diop's critically acclaimed multiple award winning documentary film, "Dahomey" was not included among the nominees after it was shortlisted for the Best Documentary Feature category and the Best International Feature Film category. 

This is the second time that her award winning film has not made the nominees after winning a highly coveted award at one of the Big Five international film festivals in the world. 

She won the Grand Prix at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival for her feature film debut, "Atlantics" and was the entry of Senegal for the Best International Feature Film category of the 2019 Academy Awards, but it was not nominated. And her second feature film, "Dahomey" that won the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival and the entry of Senegal for the Best International Feature Film category was not nominated.

The most likely predicted winner is of course, Jacques Audiard's controversial musical romantic crime drama, "Emilia Pérez" with the record of 13 nominations, the highest number for the 97th Academy Awards to be held on March 2, 2025, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles. But I doubt if the film can win up to five Oscars.

I don't know how the nominees are chosen, because the judges and specific  criteria are not known to the public, except the voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) whose membership of the academy is based more on being recommended than on the merit of professional criteria. So, membership can be influenced by the familiarity with influential members of AMPAS. 

The content and context of "Dahomey" as an anticolonial historical film on repatriation have a more universal theme than a romantic crime thriller of sexual orientation and personal insecurities and sentiments.

It will be better and more meritorious if the winners of the highly esteemed critically juried Palme 'Or and Grand Prix of the Cannes Film Festival; Golden Bear of the Berlin International Film Festival or Berlinale; Golden Lion of Venice Film Festival; People's Choice Award and the FIPRESCI Prize, or International Film Critics Awardt at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the Grand Jury Prize Dramatic, Directing Award Dramatic, Grand Jury Prize Documentary and Directing Award Documentary at Sundance Film Festival qualify for the nominations for the annual Academy Awards.

I agree with the following statement by Tim Dirks, editor of AMC's Filmsite, has written of the Academy Awards:

Unfortunately, the critical worth, artistic vision, cultural influence and innovative qualities of many films are not given the same voting weight. Especially since the 1980s, moneymaking "formula-made" blockbusters with glossy production values have often been crowd-pleasing titans (and Best Picture winners), but they haven't necessarily been great films with depth or critical acclaim by any measure"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_Awards

 

 -;By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,
Founder, Publisher and Editor,
NOLLYWOOD MIRROR® Series,
The first book series on Nollywood and the Nigerian film industry distributed by Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other booksellers.

Mati Diop's "Dahomey" Shortlisted for Two Academy Awards

Multiple award winning Senegalese  filmmaker, Mati Diop has made history by becoming the first filmmaker from Senegal and Africa to have a film shortlisted in two different categories for the highly coveted annual 97th Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars.

Her critically acclaimed documentary film,  "Dahomey" has been shortlisted for both the Documentary Feature Category and Best International Feature Film Category,  making Diop the first African filmmaker to have a film shortlisted for two Oscars.

 "Dahomey" won the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival.

Oscar Shortlist 2025: 

International Feature Film

I'm Still Here, Brazil

Universal Language, Canada

Waves, Czech Republic

The Girl with the Needle, Denmark

Emilia Pérez, France

The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Germany

Touch, Iceland

Kneecap, Ireland

Vermiglio, Italy

Flow, Latvia

Armand, Norway

From Ground Zero, Palestine

Dahomey, Senegal

How to Make Millions before Grandma Dies, Thailand

Santosh, United Kingdom

Documentary Feature Film

The Bibi Files

Black Box Diaries

Dahomey

Daughters

Eno

Frida

Hollywoodgate

No Other Land

Porcelain War

Queendom

The Remarkable life of Ibelin

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Sugarcane

Union

Will & Harper

From Mati Diop To Alice Diop: Two French Senagalese Female Filmmakers Who Have Made History

From Mati Diop To Alice Diop: Two French Senagalese Female Filmmakers Who Have Made History in Cannes and Venice

First it was Mati Diop, the French-Senegalese filmmaker whose first feature film "Atlantics" made her the first black female director to be in the Official Selection in competition for the Palme d'Or and won the Grand Prix equivalent of the silver prize at the 2019 annual Cannes Film Festival, making her the first black female director to win an award in Cannes' 72-year history. And another French Senegalese filmmaker, Alice Diop with the same surname has just made history as first black female filmmaker to win the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize, for her first feature, "Saint Omer" and also the Lion of the Future LUIGI DE LAURENTIIS Venice Award for a debut film at the 79th annual Venice International Film Festival in 2022.

Mati Diop was born in Paris on June 22 in 1982 and Alice Diop was born in Aulnay-sous-Bois, France in 1979.

-  By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, Publisher/Editor, NOLLYWOOD MIRROR® Series.

The following is from an interview with Alice Diop on the making of "Saint Omer".

What led you to develop it as a narrative feature?

A documentary was never the plan. At the time, I was too busy with research, plus we couldn’t shoot in the courtroom and I would never [make the real participants] reenact the proceedings. Anyway, I wanted to recreate my experience of listening to another woman’s story while interrogating myself, facing my own difficult truths. The narrative had to trace a series of emotional states that can lead to catharsis. It’s like accelerated psychotherapy.  

https://variety.com/2022/film/festivals/venice-alice-diop-saint-omer-1235367521/

The Challenges of Ava DuVernay, Chinonye Chukwu and Mati Diop To Nigerian Female Filmmakers

 The Challenges of Ava DuVernay, Chinonye Chukwu and Mati Diop To Nigerian Female Filmmakers

The most accomplished black female filmmaker is without dispute, Ava Marie DuVernay, the outstanding award winning African American film director, producer and screenwriter. She won the directing award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival for her second feature film "Middle of Nowhere", becoming the first black woman to win the award. For her work on "Selma" (2014), DuVernay became the first black woman to be nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director and also the first black female director to have her film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2017, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for her film, "13th" (2016).

Following in her trail blazers' status are NIgerian born Chinonye Chukwu, the first black woman to win the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Dramatic Competition, on January 27, 2019 at Sundance and the French Senegalese Filmmaker, Mati Diop who became the first black woman to make the Official Selection of the 2019 annual Cannes Film Festival in the competition for the Palme d'Or for her directorial debut feature "Atlantics" that won the Grand Prix.

DuVernay, Chukwu and Diop are highly intellectual and philosophical filmmakers who are psychologically nuanced.
They are as good as the best male directors in cinema and a big challenge to other black female filmmakers. But do we have Nigerian female filmmakers of the same intellectual calibre with them in Nigeria and the Diaspora?
Yes, we have. But they are few; including the most accomplished, Ngozi Onwurah, whose "Welcome II the Terrordome" in 1995 became the first film directed by a Black British woman to receive a UK theatrical release; Branwen Okpako; Chika Anadu; Michelle Bello; Mildred Okwo and Tope Oshin.

Ngozi Onwurah

Branwen Okpako

Mildred Okwo

Tope Oshin.

The challenges of those I mentioned who work in Nollywood are several, including the scarcity of good production designers and good actors who understand English grammar for enunciation and interpretation of characters. Majority of the actors in Nollywood and Kannywood cannot act. They just want to belong to the glitz and razzmatazz of the popularity of movie stars. These fundamental challenges have negatively impacted on the overall ratings of Nigerian movies. I have seen many examples of amateurish actors in Nigerian movies by very good filmmakers.

I look forward to seeing these ambitious Nigerian female filmmakers making groundbreaking films with cheers all the way to the top from Cannes to the Oscars.

~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima
Publisher/Editor,
NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series
https://www.amazon.com/author/ekenyerengozimichaelchima.