The Man Died (2024), English with French subtitles, 105'

Bwa Kayiman–Lakouzémi closes with the European premiere of Awam Amkpa’s film The Man Died (2024), based upon the 1972 memoir The Man Died: The Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka recounting the writer’s twenty-two months imprisonment during the Nigerian Civil War. After attempting to mediate between the warring sides, Soyinka was viewed as a political threat and detained without trial by the military regime. The film depicts his time in solitary confinement and the mental and physical toll of incarceration, while also elaborating on political resistance and the role of writers under repression.

Amkpa is a director, playwright, curator, and professor currently working between New York and Abu Dhabi. Soyinka is a prolific author, scholar, political essayist, playwright, and poet. Among many other recognitions, he was the first Nigerian (and also the first African) author to be made a Nobel laureate in Literature in 1986.