Half of a Yellow Sun(2013)
dir. Biyi Bandele
Twin sisters, one war, two impossible choices.
Where to watch: Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Tubi, FandorLetterboxd ↗
Twin sisters from a wealthy Nigerian family take very different paths in newly independent 1960s Nigeria, until the outbreak of the Biafran War forces politics into every corner of their private lives. Adapted from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel.
Why it’s here
Punk in refusing to let romance and betrayal upstage the Biafran genocide it's actually about — political catastrophe and private life collapse into each other. Pedagogical in showing how independence's promise curdled into ethnic war within a single generation.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- Nigeria
- Topics
- nigerian civil war
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
A Man of the People
Chinua Achebe
Nigerian farce. Written the year before the coup.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Biafran war through people who lived it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Season of Anomy
Wole Soyinka
Nigeria's Nobel laureate, writing through a genocide.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Sozaboy
Ken Saro-Wiwa
A boy soldier invents a language to tell his war.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Aké: The Years of Childhood
Wole Soyinka
A colonial childhood, one question at a time.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Americanah
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Left Nigeria. Learned she was Black in America.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Anthills of the Savannah
Chinua Achebe
A dictatorship and the three friends it destroys.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Arrow of God
Chinua Achebe
A priest, an officer, and the god between them.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST