Damilola Orimogunje’s Dear Ajayi Oscar submission marks the latest step in the family drama’s international journey. The Nigeria Official Selection Committee announced the film as Nigeria’s entry for the 99th Academy Awards on October 4, 2026.
The Nigerian Official Selection Committee (NOSC) announced the decision on October 4, 2026. The awards ceremony is scheduled for March 14, 2027, in Los Angeles.
The selection brings Nigeria back into the international feature film race after the country did not submit to the 98th Academy Awards, held in 2026. Announcing the decision in 2025, the NOSC said none of the films it considered met the required standard of ‘creative and technical intentionality ’.
The selection does not, however, mean that Dear Ajayi has secured an Oscar nomination. The film will go through the Academy’s eligibility and voting process alongside other entries. Voting will determine a 15-film shortlist before the Academy announces the final five nominees.
The NOSC Chairperson, Stephanie Linus, congratulated the filmmaker and expressed the committee’s support as the production entered the next stage.
The Academy recognises the NOSC as Nigeria’s body responsible for choosing Nigeria’s official submission in the international film category. The committee has overseen the country’s participation since 2019. Each year, a country or region can submit only one film through its academy-approved selection committee.
Written and directed by Orimogunje, Dear Ajayi is a Nigeria-Germany co-production set in southwestern Nigeria in the 1990s. At its centre are two estranged sisters, Ade and Titi Ajayi, whose lives have taken radically different paths.
The sisters are forced back under the same roof to care for their paralysed mother. Ade, played by Bimbo Akintola, is a devout Christian and their family’s breadwinner. Titi, portrayed by Tosin Adeyemi, is an aspiring singer whose independent spirit and refusal to conform place her at odds with her sister.
Their reunion brings old resentments to the surface, turning the responsibility of caring for an ill parent into a confrontation with wounds, expectations and compromises that families carry for years.
The Oscar announcement is the latest chapter in a journey that began almost a decade ago.
Orimogunje started developing Dear Ajayi around 2017. When filming started in 2025, he described the project as eight years in the making.
Alongside Akintola and Adeyemi, the cast includes Lanre Hassan, Williams Benson, Uzoamaka Power, Michelle Dede, Chioma Omernah, Tope Tedela, Iya Rainbow, among others.
The film screened in the competition section of the Giornate degli Autori, an independent programme held alongside the Venice International Film Festival. It is also scheduled to screen at Film Africa in London on October 30.
The Academy has changed how the International Feature Film Award is credited for this edition. The film will be credited as the nominee rather than the submitting country or region, with the director accepting the award on behalf of the creative team.
Nigeria is yet to receive a nomination in the category. Its first submission, Genevieve Nnaji’s Lionheart, was disqualified from the 2020 Oscars because its dialogue was predominantly in English.
Desmond Ovbiagele’s The Milkmaid became Nigeria’s first accepted entry for the 2021 Oscars but did not reach the shortlist. C.J. Obasi’s Mami Wata represented the country at the 2024 Oscars followed by Prince Daniel’s My Martaba, at the 2025 edition. Neither secured a nomination.
How far Dear Ajayi will go remains to be seen. But it has already crossed significant borders.
It began as an idea in development. It became a film. It reached Venice.
And now, it carries Nigeria’s name into the Oscars race.
The next stage is the Academy’s eligibility review and voting process.
Image: Damilola Orimogunje via X.
