Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory, the award-winning documentary about Wole Soyinka’s years at the University of Ìbàdàn, is now available on Amazon Prime Video. It was written, produced, and directed by Nigerian poet, writer, and linguist Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, with cinematography by the legendary filmmaker Tunde Kelani. As we reported when Túbọ̀sún first began work on the project in 2024, the film grew out of his interest in the small campus bungalow at 8 Ebrohimie Road, where Soyinka lived. The documentary is produced by OlongoAfrica and distributed by Oratures LLC, and viewers can also watch it on Vimeo On Demand, KweliTV, and Fawesome, where it streams free, with a DVD available for those who prefer a physical copy.

The film’s central figure is Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate, and its main setting is the house on Ebrohimie Road. According to the filmmakers, it was in that house that Soyinka was arrested in 1967, after returning from a visit to Biafra at the start of the Nigerian Civil War. He never went back to live in Ìbàdàn. He later moved to the University of Ifẹ̀, where he retired in 1985, a year before he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The documentary uses the bungalow to examine how the personal became the national, through the recollections of central and peripheral characters. One reviewer from Africa Is a Country went so far as to say the road itself is the protagonist.

Those characters include Soyinka himself, who speaks in archival excerpts about the writing of his poems “Civilian and Soldier” and “Season.” They also include Peyìbòmí Ṣóyínká-Airewelé, Prof. Fọlábọ̀ Àjàyí-Ṣóyínká, and the drummer and chanter Àlàbí Ògúndépò, who performs Ògún’s praise in a clip from the film. Kelani, who also took part in a Lagos screening Q&A, and others contribute their memories. The film has been an official selection at festivals including the Girona Film Festival, the African Film Festival Atlanta, and AFRIFF, and it won at the Hawaii International Film Awards and the Africa USA International Film Festival.

Critics have praised it. In The Lagos Review, Toni Kan said its biggest achievement is how it humanises Soyinka by shining a light on the laureate’s private life away from his books. Mosunmola Adeojo of The Cable called it a living archive of memories, and Nzube Nlebedim Afapinen noted that few films have documented the life of a great Nigerian writer while he is still alive. Túbọ̀sún has also discussed the film in Publishing Perspectives and World Literature Today.

You can watch the trailer and read more reviews on the film’s official website.