The African Women We’re Rooting For at the 2026 Oscars

This Sunday, March 15, the Academy Awards will host its 98th ceremony, bringing a close to what has been a highly competitive awards season. This was a year filled with culturally resonant films and nominations, sometimes surprising and at other times accurately predicted. 

It was a year where history was made with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners nabbing 16 nominations and effectively breaking a record previously held by All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land for most nominated film. And best of all, this year saw the rise of an exciting new crop of Black and African actors and filmmakers. Rising from that stellar crop are two women of African descent, both of whom were nominated for major categories and in landmark projects.

Kaouther Ben Hania was nominated under the International Feature Film category for directing The Voice of Hind, Rajab, and Wunmi Mosaku, who received a Best Actress In A Supporting Role nod for her role in Sinners, a gothic horror film directed by Ryan Coogler and praised for its genre-defying sensibilities and a plot that interweaves racism and identity, with fantastical elements.

Mosaku, a British Nigerian actress who left Nigeria for the UK as a child, has emerged as a strong contender for her category, where she was nominated alongside Amy Madigan (Weapons), Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another), Inga Ibsdotter Lilleass (Sentimental Value), and Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value). 

Mosaku played Annie in Sinners, delivering a soul-stirring performance. As Annie, Mosaku played a Hoodoo priestess whose spiritual grounding serves as an antidote to the other characters' reliance on. In an interview with OkayAfrica, Mosaku revealed that the role changed her relationship with the Yoruba language and expanded her understanding of Nigerian spiritual practices. “Doing the research for Annie introduced me to a part of me and my ancestry, and it resonated very deeply with me,” she said. 

“I've been taking Yoruba lessons for five years, and finally, in the last six months, the language has started sticking with me. I felt so connected. I felt so inspired. This character reminded me of who I'm from, where I'm from, my duty and purpose in this lineage, and where it might go.”

On the other hand, Tunisian filmmaker Ben Hania has been receiving immense praise for her film long before it became a certified contender at the 2026 Oscars. 

Her film The Voice of Hind Rajab follows a six-year-old girl who gets trapped in a car in Gaza as volunteers at the Palestine Red Crescent Society stay on the phone with her. Based on and incorporating a real-life recording of the last words spoken by Rajab, a 5-year-old Palestinian child killed on January 29, 2024. Variety described it as “unavoidably devastating.” Further stating that “The original audio footage carries a brutal emotional wallop in any context, and there’s value in making a cinema audience captive to it, unable to pause or stop or avert our ears.”

While actors and filmmakers are no strangers to winning Oscars, it would be interesting to see how this win could further elevate the stature of African filmmakers and actors on the global stage.