The writer, film-maker and theatre creator Biyi Bandele has passed away at the age of 54, news that has stunned the West African arts community where he was a creative icon who told classic Nigerian stories, sometimes in the Yoruba language, to a global audience.
He was the creator of modern Nigerian classics – co-directing the popular Netflix TV series Blood Sisters and writing the coming-of-age war novel Burma Boy. He was as well known for adapting Nigerian literary classics – a film version of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s epic Half of a Yellow Sun and a stage version of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. He had just completed Elesin Oba: The King’s Horseman, a film based on the famous play by Wole Soyinka.
