Can Nollywood Pull Oscars Like Afrobeats Pulled Grammys?

On the 15th of March,2021 Nigeria recorded a monumental moment when Burna Boy and singer Wizkid went home with Grammy awards the most prestigious award in music worldwide. The award recognizes and celebrates artists across the world who have been exceptional in their craft. The win was widely celebrated amongst Nigerians who were extremely proud of the phenomenal young men for pulling their weight in the global music scene.
The win also raised a huge question amongst several Nigerians as to if Nollywood could reciprocate such a feat and win an Oscar. Several Nollywood actors celebrated the win of the music industry and mentioned that they are motivated to work extremely hard at their craft and bring home the Oscars.
We believe that Nollywood has every chance to pull an Oscar and the recent submission of the Nigerian movie Milkmaid is proof that the industry is on the right path. Over the years we have seen tremendous growth in the industry from better scripting to directing, Makeup, and special effects, etc.
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A number of Nollywood movies have been featured on streaming platform Netflix and the organization has also exclusively produced a number of Nigerian movies. Over the years we’ve had our movies feature at International film festivals across the world like TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) and several others.
These little moments add up to the big picture and we cannot deny the fact that the industry is on a path to greatness. In the midst of these many good pointers, there are still a number of things that need great attention in the industry for us to be able to produce a world-class movie that can stand toe to toe in the international scene. The industry needs to work on its script, storyline and begin to tell more in-depth stories with substance and also stories that reflect the diverse culture of the giant of Africa.
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Getting the right actors to interpret a role is one area where Nollywood is lacking greatly. There is great recycling of the same crop of actors in every movie and one thing we cannot deny is how a lot of influencers, reality TV stars, online comedians who have no acting background are being brought into Nollywood to rake in numbers for producers at the cinema.
Any industry without proper structure is bound to fail or struggle to emerge giants. The movie industry lacks a proper structure especially in areas of its leadership which have been quite obvious in how the industry has been run over the years. Over time we have seen actors, actresses call out the leadership of the movie industry for their poor performance and neglect of its members.
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Another constrain to Nollywood winning is the poor financing of the industry. To make a world-class movie you need huge financial backing, multiple investors to provide you with cash to finance the project. Most Nollywood movies are funded from a personal purse that has very limited cashflow. Despite all of these constraints we will still applaud Nollywood for a job well done so far and we can only hope that this dream of the Oscars come to pass.Photos Credit: Getty