YorubaWorlds, the documentary guided by Wole Soyinka, will screen in Bristol on 22 November as part of Afrika Eye. The film follows Yoruba culture from Nigeria to Brazil through stories, music and the descendants of Africans taken across the Atlantic.
The screening of Amazing Grace: YorubaWorlds starts at 2pm at Easton Community Centre. Watershed’s booking page confirms an introduction from Afrika Eye and a question-and-answer session afterwards, although the participants have not yet been announced.
Haitian-American director Raynald Leconte places his own search for ancestry after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake within the film’s journey. The route moves from Yorubaland to Bahia, examining cultural connections that survived forced displacement and developed across generations.
Afrika Eye identifies Soyinka as co-writer and narrator. Its synopsis describes Yoruba stories, songs and rhythms sustained by descendants of people trafficked from Africa to Brazil. Nigerian musician Seun Kuti and Brazilian singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil are among the contributors.
Watershed also lists Carlinhos Brown and Margareth Menezes. Its description says the film honours Fela Anikulapo Kuti through his music, political voice and influence. The programme brings Nigerian and Afro-Brazilian musicians into the same account of cultural transmission.
The documentary arrives in Bristol with recognition from the Pan African Film and Arts Festival in Los Angeles. The festival’s award announcement, dated 24 February 2026, names Amazing Grace: YorubaWorlds as the winner of its Programmers’ Award for Feature Documentary.
The award is distinct from the festival’s jury prize for best feature documentary. PAFF’s published list credits Leconte as director and identifies Brazil and Nigeria as the countries associated with the film.
The project had also been presented at Harvard’s Hutchins Center in February 2025. The centre’s programme listed a screening at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, followed by a discussion with Henry Louis Gates Jr, Soyinka, Leconte and co-producer Tunde Kelani.
Calder Classics, a sponsor of the film project, described that earlier programme as exploring the relationship between Yoruba culture, Afro-Brazilian history and reconnection with ancestry. Its account also highlighted Soyinka’s engagement with Greek tragedy and myth alongside his Yoruba cultural foundations.
Soyinka received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, becoming the first African laureate in that category. The Swedish Academy’s announcement placed Yoruba myths, rites and cultural patterns at the roots of his writing, alongside his familiarity with Western literature.
In a 2005 interview for NobelPrize.org, Soyinka recalled growing up in Aké, Abeokuta, in a Christian household surrounded by traditional religious and Muslim communities. His account described formal schooling and the traditional learning around him as parallel influences during childhood.
The Bristol event forms part of Afrika Eye’s programme from 19 to 22 November. The festival opens with Clarissa, the Esiri brothers’ Lagos-set reworking of Mrs Dalloway, starring Sophie Okonedo and David Oyelowo. Other films address youth, migration, music and community life across Africa and the diaspora.
Festival director Gwinyai Mparutsa said: “African storytelling deserves to be platformed and celebrated, not as a niche but as some of the most vital cinema being made today.”
Tickets for the YorubaWorlds screening are listed at £10, with £7 concessions and £5 tickets for people aged 24 or under, refugees and asylum seekers. Online and telephone bookings carry a 12 per cent fee. The venue is Easton Community Centre on Kilburn Street, rather than Watershed’s Harbourside cinema.
Archive portrait: Wole Soyinka at Stockholm Public Library, 4 October 2018. Frankie Fouganthin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized for display. Not a film still or a photograph of the Bristol event. Source; licence.
