2025 AMVCA Nominations: 13 Hits And Misses

The Misses

Clarence Peters: AMVCA still maddeningly puts series and films in the same category. But even so, it’s surprising that the man hasn’t earned a cinematography nod for Inside Life. As we wrote in a review, the project loses its way after a couple episodes—but the cinematography is often ravishing. Witness the scene featuring two characters overlooking the city at dusk and wonder how the AMVCA missed this fine work.

Best Actress: Beverly Osu is outstanding in A Ghetto Love Story. She adequately conveys her character’s journey from initial innocence to a gradual accumulation of experience and mischief. It’s a stunning performance that any jury should immediately flag for its completeness. It’s shocking that she’s not been nominated. Which name should Osu have replaced? Easy. Uche Montana’s. After years on low-budget YouTube productions, Montana is beginning to receive attention from the other side of the industry. But the Mercy Aigbe-produced Thin Line is neither premium enough for its big screen aspirations nor a project that showcases Montana’s talent to a degree that demands serious attention or awards notice. Osu was robbed.

Costume Design: Of the 5 nominees for costume design, 3 are for work on Yoruba epics. But there isn’t sufficient differentiation between Nollywood epics for this level of dominance. It’s not a good look for the AMVCA jury. Although it does well in spotting Phoenix Fury‘s attention to period-fitting outfits, the over-recognition of Yoruba epic costumes carries a smell of laziness. As though, once the garish costumes came in view, the jury stop searching for excellence.

Lisabi: It’s not quite clear how Lisabi: The Uprising has earned 10 nominations heading into the 2025 AMVCA awards night when it was one of last year’s mainstream artistic flops. The story is too thin to be in two parts. The acting is neither spectacular nor consistently brilliant. Its costumes are nothing new. Its visual effects are laughably bad on any budget talk more of a Netflix budget. Yet some of those same things have been recognised by the AMVCA jury. Watch the climactic beheading scene and marvel how anyone thought this is a film to bring to an awards ceremony in 2025.

A Ghetto Love Story: Basketmouth’s film should have received more nominations. It’s quite shocking that in a year with a film this good, inferior projects like Lisabi and House of Ga’a have received multiple nominations. It’s ridiculous really. Decisions like this one is why the AMVCA has been unable to overcome a sneering resignation to its status as the most visible film and TV awards rather than an enthusiastic acceptance as the industry’s arbiter of excellence.

With Difficulty Comes Ease: A total shut out of Korede Azeez’s excellent Prime Video project means lovers of fine Nollywood should perhaps be grateful that A Ghetto Love Story even showed up in the list of AMVCA nominees. This film following a southern woman in the aftermath of her Muslim husband’s death has the texture of an Asghar Farhadi picture. The Iranian filmmaker has received two Oscars for his work. Azeez, on the other hand, has been totally ignored for the AMVCA nominations. A travesty and a tragedy.

Daniel Oriahi: He owned the year in Nollywood. The AMVCA jury missed an opportunity to give him two nominations, settling instead for his work on the more nominally sophisticated The Weekend. Which is deserved. But his work on A Ghetto Love Story should also have been nominated. It happened with Steven Soderbergh at the 2001 Oscars and with Francis Ford Coppola at the 1975 Oscars. Oriahi, a known disciple of cinema, should have been granted that company. Why? Well, in a decade or more, mainstream Nollywood has set only a handful of superb films entirely (or almost so) on the Lagos mainland. A Ghetto Love Story, which has Basketmouth as executive producer, is one of them.

Phoenix Fury: It isn’t always the case that a little seen film from a festival appears on the AMVCA nominations list. Yet that is exactly what has happened with Ifeoma Chukwuogo’s opus, a picture that was named the big winner at the 2024 AFRIFF. It should have earned more nominations but given that it isht yet available to the public, maybe one can’t complain too much.

Farmer’s Bride: FilmOne Studios produced a relatively small movie and, in the process, made one of last year’s best. It wasn’t the company’s first try at an “Original”—that was the rather anodyne Adire—but Farmer’s Bride is certainly the company’s finest. With a small cast, it tells a tale that stays true to the world it creates. It also says something about lust, love, and family.

Mercy Aigbe: A few people have said that Nollywood doesn’t have an acting talent problem, that the problem is there are too few directors and screenplays to bring out the best in our performers. They’ll be right if their evidence is Mercy Aigbe’s performance in Farmer’s Bride. Subdued and subtle, her work is finely tooled to the mood of each scene she appears in.

Tolu Obanro: He’s one of the main architects of the sound of New Nollywood’s Yoruba epics. The films themselves are too uneven to be classed as great but Obanro’s work across a selection of them deserves recognition.

Victoria Eze: The screenplay to A Ghetto Love Story is quietly ambitious. Because of how well-handled it is, it’s easy to miss that Eze has given us a story that follows a cast of characters in a neighbourhood over years, each of the main players developing in a manner that never feels out of step with their motivations. By the time the film delivers its last sick kick, you might be surprised, but Eze’s writing and plotting is so meticulous nothing about the twist feels gratuitous. She’s penned a screenplay that respects and entertains the viewer.

Holmes Awa, Paballo Molingoane: Awa has already won an AMVCA editing award with a co-editor. That was for his work on the exceptional Showmax series Crime and Justice. He’s back on the list of nominees with another co-editor, his South African partner Molingoane. Together, their work on Soft Love is remarkable. The story follows an influencer and as a result the film has to provide seamless transitions between the real world and the online world within its fictional universe. It is done capably throughout and with just the light touch that a romcom insists upon.