Damilola Orimogunje’s Dear Ajayi has been selected as Nigeria’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the 99th Academy Awards. The selection returns Nigeria to the Oscars race after the country did not submit a film for the previous edition. Dear Ajayi, a Nigeria-Germany co-production set in 1990s southwestern Nigeria, follows estranged sisters Ade and Titi as they are forced to reunite to care for their paralysed mother, bringing questions of family, faith, ambition, grief and reconciliation into the centre of the story. The film premiered in the competition section of Giornate degli Autori alongside the 2026 Venice International Film Festival.

Dear Ajayi is Nigeria’s fifth submission to the International Feature Film category. It follows Genevieve Nnaji’s Lionheart, Nigeria’s first submission, which was disqualified because most of its dialogue was in English; Desmond Ovbiagele’s The Milkmaid, submitted for the 93rd Academy Awards; C.J. Obasi’s Mami Wata, which represented Nigeria at the 96th Oscars; and Amina Abdullahi Sanda’s Mai Martaba, submitted for the 97th Academy Awards. None of the four reached the final Oscar nominations, although Mami Wata became notable for its international festival success, while Mai Martaba appeared on the Academy’s official list of eligible International Feature Film submissions.

For Orimogunje, the Oscar selection builds on a body of work that has already earned attention at major African and international film platforms. His debut feature, For Maria: Ebun Pataki, premiered at Film Africa in 2020, won the festival’s Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature and went on to receive six African Movie Academy Award nominations. As a producer, he also worked on All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White, which premiered at the Berlinale and won the Teddy Award for Best Feature; Dear Ajayi now marks his second feature as a filmmaker and gives him an opportunity to take his intimate, character-driven cinema into the Academy’s international race.

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