The race for this year’s Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) will begin in earnest this weekend as Africa is set for the release of nominations ahead of the ceremony which promises to reward hard working filmmakers who have excelled within the last year.

The AMAA screening committees and jury had worked assiduously behind the scenes to see movies that were submitted for consideration.

Generally, sources said movies submitted were of good quality and an improvement of the previous year.

Various African filmmakers have refined their works and have tried to produce exceptional movies that could compete on the biggest movie platforms in the world.

They are not only learning the arts of good filmmaking but also using high-quality equipment and focusing on-out-of-the ordinary African stories that Africans can relate to. To a larger extent, there is no doubt that technically good movies were produced within the last year. It is believed that organizers have taken note of the errors it had encountered within the last eight years of AMAA organisation and improve upon it.

This year’s nomination will be released via a huge party in Malawi on Friday, March 15 and the question lingering on the minds of Africans is which African movie will top the nominations?

Last year, South African movies ‘Otelo Burning’ and ‘How to Steal 2 Million’ and Nigerian movie ‘Adesuwa’ garnered the most nominations for the award ceremony which was held in Lagos on April 22, 2012. The jury announced the nominees in 24 categories. Nigeria received 52 nominations whilst South Africa got 45 nods. Ghana had 17, followed by Kenya with 14, Uganda with 5, and Tanzania with three.

Entries from America, Canada, France, Germany, Guadalupe, Italy, Jamaica, and the UK also got nominations. AMAA received 328 entries from across Africa, up from 220 in 2011. These included 134 feature films, 88 short films, 57 documentaries and six animations.

This year, the figures have increased, with a total of 671 films submitted for consideration.

The breakdown included 184 short films, 108 Diaspora features – documentaries and shorts films, 60 documentaries from Africa and 319 feature films from within and outside Africa, including films made by Africans living abroad.

Content: ama-wards.com, Image/Videos(s): ama-wards.com