Half of a Yellow
Sun, the
highly-anticipated film, will have its world premiere at the 38th
annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) today, Sunday 8th
September 2013, at the Winter Garden Theatre, Toronto, Canada.
Half of a Yellow
Sun’s premiere at the prestigious TIFF, is a particularly momentous occasion
for Nigeria's booming film industry. Today's event is the first ever red-carpet
screening of a Nigerian film at a leading international film festival, and is a
befitting debut for the sensational, one-of-a-kind, iconic production.
The British-born Nigerian
actor, Chiwetel Ejiofor (star of Inside Man, American Gangster, 12 Years a
Slave), and Thandie Newton (star of Crash, For Colored Girls, The Pursuit of
Happyness), will lead the cast of Nigerian and international actors to the
festival. Anika Noni Rose (Dreamgirls, The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency), John
Boyega (Attack the Block) and top Nollywood actors Genevieve Nnaji and Onyeka
Onwenu are also scheduled to attend the premiere.
Based on
the award-winning novel by Nigerian author, Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun is directed by prolific UK-based Nigerian
playwright, Biyi Bandele, and produced by Andrea Calderwood (HBO’s Generation
Kill, The Last King of Scotland: winner
of three BAFTAs and an Oscar). The British/Nigerian co-production was
shot at the Tinapa Film Studios in Calabar and in London.
Set in 1960s Nigeria, Half of a Yellow Sun is an epic love-story weaving together the
lives of four people swept up in the turbulence of the Nigerian civil war. The sweeping romantic drama chronicles the
lives of Olanna (Thandie Newton) and Kainene (Anika Noni Rose), two glamorous
twins from a wealthy Nigerian family.
Returning to a privileged city life in newly
independent 1960s Nigeria, after their English education, the two sisters make starkly
different choices back at home. Olanna shocks her family by going to live with
her lover, the “revolutionary professor”, Odenigbo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and his
devoted houseboy Ugwu (John Boyega) in the dusty university town of Nsukka; while
Kainene, once the rebellious tomboy, turns to business, and proves fiercely
successful at it. Kainene surprises herself
and the family even more by falling in love with Richard (Joseph Mawle), an
English writer.
Preoccupied by their romantic entanglements,
each desperate to navigate the fractious politics of the day, the relationship
between the sisters turns sour as betrayal tears them apart. The sisters become victims of the civil war
that threatened to divide Nigeria in two and pits the world in polarised halves.
Half of a Yellow Sun will take the audience
on a beautiful journey through the war-time lives of these beautiful women in a
powerful, at times horrifying, and, as the response of readers around the world
has shown, intensely emotional experience.
Half Of A Yellow Sun won the prestigious
Orange Prize for Fiction in the UK (2007) and was a finalist for
the National Book Critics Circle Award. The novel has sold over 1 million
copies worldwide, and has been translated into 30 languages.
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