Chinonye Chukwu, the black director of “Till,” attacked this year’s Oscars as “upholding whiteness,” after her film received zero nominations.
Chukwu’s “Till” was released in October last year, and told the story of Mamie Till, a black woman whose son Emmett was murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, and became a “crusader for social justice” as a result.
However, despite being tipped to receive nominations at the 2023 Oscars, “Till” came up short when they were announced this week, something Chukwu declared must have been down to the “whiteness” and racism from the Academy.
“We live in a world and work in industries that are so aggressively committed to upholding whiteness and perpetuating an unabashed misogyny towards Black women,” Chukwu wrote on her Instagram account on Tuesday. Viola Davis, who starred in The Woman King, about the leader of the slave-trading African nation of Dahomey, also failed to be nominated.
“I am forever in gratitude for the greatest lesson of my life – regardless of any challenges or obstacles, I will always have the power to cultivate my own joy, and it is this joy that will continue to be one of my greatest forms of resistance,” the Nigerian-American director concluded.
View this post on Instagram
Despite Chukwu’s claim that the Oscars upheld “whiteness,” the film that has received the most nominations (11) for the 2023 Academy Awards is “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” starring Michelle Yeoh, and featuring roles from Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan, all actors of Asian descent. Yeoh is the first ever Asian woman to be nominated for Best Actress.
The film receiving the 8th most Oscar nominations this year is “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” with Angela Bassett, who is black, receiving a nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category, the first actor of any gender or race to win a nomination for acting in a Marvel Cinematic Universe film.
The Academy Awards came under criticism for lacking diversity in 2016, when the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag was founded. Since 2020, to qualify, films must have at least one lead role or two main supporting roles be from actors of diverse backgrounds, along with two creative leads who tick the boxes.
“The Academy is committed to playing a vital role in helping make this a reality,” the organisation said at the time. “We believe these inclusion standards will be a catalyst for long-lasting, essential change in our industry.”
