Toronto Film Festival dedicates presentation of The King’s Horseman to memory of Biyi Bandele: screening 10th, 15th and 17th Sept

The final film from late writer-director and novelist Biyi Bandele (Half of a Yellow Sun) is a cinematic adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s acclaimed anti-colonial stage play, Death and the King’s Horseman. The Toronto Film Festival 2022 will dedicate the presentation of The King’s Horseman to the memory of Biyi Bandele, October 1967 – August 2022.

The Toronto International Film Festival returns in September 2022 for its 47th edition — 11 days of international and Canadian cinema, special events featuring some of the biggest names in film, and TIFF’s Industry Conference, offering diverse and innovative perspectives on the art and business of film.

The day has come for Elésin Oba (Odunlade Adekola) to accompany the Alaafin of Oyo, King of Yorubaland (contemporary Nigeria, Togo, and Benin), into the afterlife. Celebration is in order! As the King’s Horseman, Elésin is responsible for the political ruler’s smooth travels in life and in death, making this day the long-intended end of his honourable, fleshly commitments to the Yoruba people. Since the Alaafin is dead, Yoruba religious tradition insists Elésin must commit ritual suicide.

On his final ceremonial procession through the market, Elésin notices a passing bride-to-be and decides to delay the evening’s sacred ritual in order to marry her first. Iyaloja (Shaffy Bello), “mother of the market” and mother to a newly jilted son, cautions Elésin not to let his earthly desires interfere with his spiritual duties. Unfortunately, neither are aware that the British military plans to stop the evening’s ritual from happening, setting off a sequence of events no one is prepared for.

Biyi Bandele (TIFF 2013’s Half of a Yellow Sun), who passed away this past month at the age of 54, and producer Mo Abudu (TIFF 2016’s The Wedding Party, TIFF 2017’s The Royal Hibiscus Hotel) teamed for the first cinematic adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s acclaimed 1975 stage play Death and the King’s Horseman. Based on real events during the region’s British colonial period, the tragic dramedy was originally written in English. Bandele, however, insisted on the Indigenous translation for screen, harmonizing Soyinka’s poetics indelibly with the Yoruba sonic dialogue of interconnecting beats and talking drums. A reimagining that stays close to its source material, The King’s Horseman entrusts the challenge of Soyinka’s cosmic dilemma to a generation of cinema lovers armed for study.

Nigeria, 2022 Yoruba WORLD PREMIERE 96 minutes

Director
Biyi Bandele

Cast
Odunlade Adekola, Shaffy Bello, Deyemi Okanlawon, Mark Elderkin, Jenny Stead, Omowunmi Dada, Olawale ‘Brymo’ Ashmi, Jide Kosoko, Kevin Ushi, Langley Kirkwood, Fares Boulous ‘Oyibo Rebel’

Cinematography
Lance Gewer

Editing
Thomas Adetunji

Executive Producer
Mo Abudu

Producers
#MoAbudu, Heidi Uys, Judith Audu, Adeola Osunkojo, James Amuta, Quinty Pillay