Trailer
Plot summary
In Oyo Town in the 1940s, the Alaafin has just died. Custom holds that Elesin Oba, the king's chief horseman, must end his own life that night so that the king's spirit can pass to the ancestors and disaster can be kept from the community. For Elesin, the rite is a lifelong debt. It is believed that if he fails, the king's ghost will wander the earth and bring calamity on the land. On the evening appointed for the rite, he is drawn to beauty and to desire, and he turns away from the transaction he was meant to complete. The town is under British colonial rule.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The King's Horseman (2022)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The director of Elesin Oba, Biyi Bandele, passed away in August 2022, shortly before the premiere of the movie, which he had directed.
- Elesin Oba is the first Yoruba-language film to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and the first time a Wole Soyinka work was made into a motion picture since Ossie Davies's Kongi's Harvest in 1970.
