He had done some notable work. But he had so much ahead of him. He was the director of the new Netflix and EbonyLife Films co-production Elesin Oba, The King’s Horseman, billed to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. It is a screen adaptation of Wole Soyinka’s well-known stage play Death and the King’s Horseman. It was yet another signpost in a burgeoning filmmaking career. This year also, he directed the first Netflix Nigerian Original Series Blood Sisters.

Biyi Bandele’s death on August 7 cut short an expressive creative life. He was 54. His debut film as a director, Half of a Yellow Sun, was reported to have got a “rapturous reception” at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. It was based on the 2006 novel of the same title by Chimamanda Adichie. He directed Fifty, which was screened at the 2015 London Film Festival; and also directed the third season of the popular MTV drama series, Shuga.

His other directorial credits are FELA – Father of Afrobeat (2018), a documentary for the BBC; and his self-produced documentary, Africa States of Independence (2010).

“It was something that pained him for the rest of his life. He had one or two bullets that were left because it was safer where they were than trying to get them out. He had this recurring nightmare where he would wake up in a fit and we would have to restrain him because it would take him a few minutes before he realised he was not at war and somebody was not trying to kill him. That was probably one of the things that turned me into a writer.”

He showed early promise, and won a short story competition when he was just 14. As an undergraduate studying drama at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, he won the International Students Play Script Competition in 1989 with an unpublished play, Rain. He also won the 1990 British Council, Lagos, award for poetry.

When he moved to London, at the age of 22, he went with the manuscripts of two novels he had written. The books were published, which was a testimony to his writing skill. He had a stint at the Royal Court Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

His plays include Marching for Fausa (1993); Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought (1994) and Two Horsemen (1994), which was selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival.

He also wrote novels, including The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (1991), The Sympathetic Undertaker and Other Dreams (1991), The Street (1999) and Burma Boy (2007), which was inspired by his father’s war experience.

Bandele’s writing life took him to places. He was writer-in-residence at Talawa Theatre Company (1994 to 1995), resident dramatist at the Royal National Theatre Studio (1996), the Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge (2000-2001), and Royal Literary Fund Resident Playwright at the Bush Theatre from 2002 to 2003.

There was no question about his creative passion. He was said to have been planning a film adaptation of his novel, Burma Boy, and finished writing another book, Yoruba Boy Running, which he recently submitted for publishing. He left an impressive legacy of multidimensionality.

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