At the Gala Night of the 12^th edition of the Uganda Film Festival, held in Kampala on 6^th June 2025, Prof. Dominic Dipio won two awards. One, for Best Animation film category where five films were nominated. Lia and Origa, the winning film, is an adaptation of a Ugandan (Ma’di) folktale. It is about an archetypal willful girl, who finds it difficult to follow instructions from her mother and does things her own way. Her disobedience and failure to keep in the company of her peers led to her bringing home Origa, the ogre, who clung onto her back after helping her lift a heavy water-pot onto her head. How can Lia be liberated from the blood-sucking Origa, who finds her back comfortable?

The second accolade was the Lifetime Achievement award, accorded to Prof. Dipio for her outstanding contribution to cinema and culture as a scholar, mentor, and practitioner in this field. Uganda celebrates her for her remarkable career as a mentor whose singular contribution has sharpened the growth of the film industry in Uganda. The quality and quantity of film production in the country has greatly improved, thanks to her tireless efforts as a juror since the inception of the national film festival in 2013, through to her current position as the chair of the Content Support Development Programme that selects viable film projects for government support. Furthermore, Dipio has wide juror experience nationally, regionally, and internationally. She was also hallowed for her scholarly publications on cinema, such as Gender Terrains in African Cinema.

Her practice as a filmmaker traverses several genres, beginning with her debut feature film, A Meal to Forget, which received the Art Press Association award of Uganda; to documentaries like Crafting the Bamasaba; and now to animation film. The citation included the fact that Sr. Dipio’s significant contribution in the field of communication and particularly cinema on the continent has already been recognized when she received the SIGNIS Africa Award of Excellence for contribution to the communication apostolate in Africa in 2022.

With such accomplishments, Dipio is one of the very few who have been appointed as consultants from the continent: first, to the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, by Pope Benedict; and then later to the Dicastery of Culture and Education, by Pope Francis. Thus, cumulatively, she has made significant and uninterrupted contributions to art and culture in her career.