‘The Man Died’ wins Best Screenplay award at Carthage Film Festival, Tunisia, heads to Luxor, Egypt Jan 9-16

* Already won Best Screenplay at AFRIFF, Best Audience Choice Awards at ENIFF

By Editor

THE Man Died, the feature film inspired by Wole Soyinka’s prison notes of same title, clinched the Best Screenplay trophy at the 35th Carthage International Film Festival, which held November 14-21 in the North African city of Tunis, Tunisia. Both the director of the film Awam Amkpa and the lead actor Wale Ojo were in attendance of the festival.

At the closing ceremony of the festival held at the Opera Theatre in the Tunis city of culture, The Man Died, written by United Kingdom-based Bode Asiyanbi, was unveiled as a winner in the feature film competition alongside 14 other entries from diverse countries. Entries for the various competitive categories were received from about 100 countries, according to the festival’s website. The Grand Prize called the Golden Tanit was won by Tunisian Lotfi Achour’s feature film The Red Path (Les Enfants Rouges). The silver trophy went to To an Unknown World by Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel, while the bronze trophy went to Demba by Senegalese director Mamadou Dia.

Founded in 1966, Carthage Film Festival (Journées cinématographiques de Carthage, or JCC), one of the oldest film festivals in the world, is renowned for attracting large casts of the best of global cinema family. It is reputed to champion the cause of African and Arab countries and enhancing Global South cinema in general. Supported by the Tunisian Ministry of Culture, JCC is reputed as one of the oldest film festivals in the world, and certainly the oldest and most prestigious on the continent. A total of 217 films from 21 countries featured in the four main competitions – feature narrative films, feature documentary films, short narrative films, and short documentary films. Though yet to be officially released to the market, The Man Died has since its “special premiere” in July in Lagos to mark the Nobel laureate, dramatist, poet, essayist and human/civil rights activist, Soyinka’s 90th birthday, had already won two awards – Best Screenplay Award at the 2024 African International Film Festival (AFRIFF), (November) and Best Audience Choice Award at the Eastern Nigeria International Film Festival (ENIFF).

Directed by New York-US and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates-based Prof. Awam Amkpa and produced by Lagos, Nigeria-based Femi Odugbemi for Zuri24 Media, The Man Died is now set to feature at yet another prestigious African film festival, Luxor International Film Festival in Egypt, January 9-16. It will thereafter go to Jo’Burg Film Festival, South Africa in February, African Film Festival, New York, US in March and FESPACO in Burkina Faso in March, among others.

The film is being considered for special screenings at educational institutions in Florence, Italy, Abu Dhabi in the UAE, Jo’Burg in South Africa as well at Harvard University, Oxford University, and at Ithaca College, among others. Importantly, the film is also being reviewed by at least three major global streaming platforms and international distribution channels.

The Man Died stars a coterie of renowned names on the Nigerian screen, including Wale Ojo as Wole, Sam Dede as Yisa, Norbert Young (Prison Superintendent), Francis Onwochei (Prison Controller and Edmund Enaibe as Commissioner and international actors such as London-UK-based Christiana Oshunniyi (Laide Soyinka), and Los Angeles, US-based Abraham Awam-Amkpa (Johnson), among others.

The film began its global tour in London in July as part of the Wole Soyinka at 90 celebration jointly organized and hosted by The Africa Centre and the Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange (WSICE). It returned to same London in October as part of the African Film Festival, and also had an educational screening at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. It was screened on October 11 on the ‘Accra Streamfest’ bill of the “Labone Dialogues”, hosted by New York University, NYU, Accra.

The film has also had a series of home runs including on October 5 at the Quramo Festival of Words (QFest 2024), Lagos and the Lagos Book & Art Festival (LABAF) on November 14.

Produced by Zuri 24 Media, The Man Died, according to the synopsis on its website — www.themandiedmovie.com — is the story of Wole Soyinka’s 27-month incarceration by the Nigerian government in 1967 at the cusp of the civil war. He was famously seeking a truce between Biafra and the Federal Government to allow time for a negotiated settlement of the conflict. It is fundamentally a personal account. Essentially, the subject found refuge from the brutality inflicted upon him by retreating into and living within his own mind. At times, he drifted about the frontiers of madness, hanging on to himself by a thread. At other times, he pondered, listened, and watched, like only the truly otherwise unoccupied can. Importantly, he managed to scrounge paper and a pencil from time to time and record his journey of ‘motionlessness.”

Wale Ojo (left) as Wole Soyinka in The Man Died and film director Prof. Awam Amkpa in Tunis for the Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia

The director of the film, an actor, playwright, director of stage plays, films and curator of visual arts, Awam Amkpa is a Nigerian-American professor of drama, film and social and cultural analysis at the New York University in New York and Abu Dhabi. Author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires (Routledge, 2003), Awam is also a director of film documentaries and curator of photographic exhibitions and film festivals. He has also written several articles on representations in Africa and its diasporas, representations, and modernisms in theatre, postcolonial theatre, and Black Atlantic films.
Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSqp6Z0XsuE&feature=youtu.be
The producer, an accomplished storyteller, content producer, filmmaker, and media scholar, Odugbemi is the Founder/CEO of Zuri24 Media Lagos, producers of the film. His screen credits over 25 years in the creative industries span feature films, multiple drama TV series and documentaries. He was one of the founding producers of the daily soap opera Tinsel as well as Executive Producer of several popular TV soap operas, including Battleground, Brethren, Movement JAPA, and Covenant, among others. Also, producer of several award-winning documentaries and feature films, Odugbemi is Co-Founder/Executive Director of IREPRESENT International Documentary Film Festival, Lagos and a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoeiYA8vjrk