Bentley University

175 Forest Street

#InternationalFilmSeries

***Co-Sponsored by Bentley’s African Student Association***

Half of a Yellow Sun (2013-Nigeria/U.K.-111 min.) directed by Biyi Bandele

Playwright Biyi Bandele’s film is based on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s evocative novel about Nigeria’s Biafran war.  Set in the late 1960s, the film centers on two glamorous sisters from a wealthy Nigerian family, Olana and Kainene (played by Thandie Newton and Anika Noni Rose), whose paths diverge upon their return home from schooling abroad in England and amidst the political turmoil of the Nigerian civil war.  After a betrayal amongst the sisters, Olana shocks her family by marrying a “revolutionary” professor, and Kainene pursues a career as a businesswoman and surprises herself by falling in love with an English writer.  Initially preoccupied by their own romantic dramas, the sisters soon become caught up in the events of the civil war, during which the Igbo people sought to establish Biafra as an independent republic, and which ended in shocking violence.  This English-language romantic drama is a powerful tale of individual lives swept into the promise, disappointment, and trauma of civil war.

 

Bentley’s Spring 2025 International Film Series is made possible with generous support from the Department of Global Studies, the Department of English and Media Studies, the Valente Center for the Arts & Sciences, the Bentley Library, the Office of Sustainability, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Film and Media Studies Lab, the Academic Technology Center, Bentley’s African Student Association, and the Bentley Service-Learning and Civic Engagement Center.

Event Details


Zoom Meeting ID 971 7700 6066