For over forty years, poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey has been at the forefront of the fight against environmental destruction in the Niger Delta. He has been to village meetings and international climate summits. He has been in prison cells during Nigeria’s military era. He has written reports and filed lawsuits. He was a co-recipient of the 2010 Right Livelihood Award. But the oil still flows, the spills still happen, and the people still suffer. So Bassey tried something different. He invited a group of young people to write poetry with him.
The result is Hope Is a Word, an 82-minute documentary by Norwegian-Italian filmmaker Maria Galliani Dyrvik, following Bassey as he mentors a new generation of writers and activists living in Nigeria’s oil-producing Niger Delta. The documentary premiered at the 2026 Sheffield DocFest in the International First Feature Competition, where it played to sold-out audiences and hosted a standing-room-only panel with Amnesty International, capped by a Q&A that included a poetry performance from Bassey, Barinedum Mbee, and Odudu-Abasi Asuquo. It has since screened at the Durban International Film Festival in South Africa, where the jury awarded it a Special Mention in the Best South African Documentary category “for the dedication in building the documentary over many years while using poetry to tell a powerful narrative,” and it has picked up 21 nominations at the Toronto International Nollywood Film Festival.
Finding the Story
For Dyrvik, the journey to the Niger Delta was not an obvious one. She grew up between Norwegian fjords and the Italian Alps, and it was poetry, not activism, that carried her in. “All my life I have found my place in words, poems, and stories, and that was how Nnimmo and I spoke,” she tells The Nollywood Reporter. “Somehow, we found a special dimension in which to communicate.” Bassey came up with the idea of the workshops in 2021, and Dyrvik and producer Anita Vedå were there for the very first sessions. “With the young poets, the same thing happened. We spoke the same language, the one of writing and listening, exchanging poems, and encouraging each other.”
Dyrvik is aware of her position as an outsider and intentional about her role. “The fight against extractivism and exploitation is a global one. It’s everybody’s responsibility,” she explains. “Filming in the Niger Delta over the years, Anita and I have been aware of our position as ‘outsiders.’ But because we were doing this side by side with the writers and activists, this has just pushed us further to listen, learn and work to amplify their voices.”
Why Poetry
The film’s treatment of poetry is deliberate. Dyrvik and editor Federico Neri debated how to present the poems and settled on simply showing the writers reading them. “More and more we felt like the rawest and most honest way of presenting the poems, and also the best way to actually connect with them, was to simply show the writers reading them,” Dyrvik says. “We really decided to trust the power of poetry and the power of the poets.”
One of the film’s rawest moments comes when Barinedum Mbee reads her poem “Thoughts from Sleep,” about her father’s well, once the finest water, now filled with crude. “I knew immediately it would be in the film, in full length, exactly like she read it,” Dyrvik recalls. The film also features Bassey’s son Ukpono, who chose rap over the poetry his father writes. “Ukpono’s raps are something really special,” Dyrvik says. “To me, they are both a continuation and a shift in terms of Nnimmo’s work. Ukpono’s rap is pure poetry. The fact that he brings words about pollution, the government’s false promises, and resistance into the studio and records them with friends means those words get a whole new power.”
Filming Resistance
The sound design is equally intentional. Under shots of oil on water and polluted land runs a shifting-ice texture, an almost arctic sound for a tropical delta. Dyrvik says it comes from archive tapes filmed by Erabanabari Kobah. “Already in the edit with Federico, we felt the sound of those recordings had something surreal to it, both musical and chilling,” she says. “I think it’s that sinister dimension that we really tried to bring into the sound design, this sense of a threat, an enemy unseen and yet very visible.”
For Bassey, being followed by a camera was hard at first. “It felt like having one’s privacy invaded, right down to your mind,” he admits. “As time went on I got to see that since I was not in a ‘Big Brother’ house, I had to learn to cope with a visible camera. What made it bearable was the high level of patience and comradeship exhibited by both Anita and Maria. They indulged me by accepting no filming from me at times.”
Bassey is known for his philosophy of “invisible leadership,” the belief that movements should not have a single prominent leader who can be killed or silenced. “In the movement, there should not be a drum major. We need horizontal leadership where folks step up as needed and recede when the job is set in motion, like waves on the coastline.” The film captures this philosophy in action: Bassey is seen listening more than he speaks, occasionally posing a question or reciting a verse.
Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Legacy
In one workshop, Bassey asks the group, “Are you inspired to write?” The question anchors the film. “We were literally sitting in the shadow of Ken Saro-Wiwa, in the memorial park, with his mausoleum looming not far off from where we were,” he explains. “We had just discussed what he stood for and how drama, poetry, and film were prominent in his artistic armoury. After soaking in some readings of the late sage’s poems and seeing how they applied to the realities of the Niger Delta, participants needed a cue to let their creative juice flow. It was the moment of decision. It was a call to action.”
Ken Saro-Wiwa looms large over the film. The Ogoni writer and activist was executed by Nigeria’s military government in 1995, alongside eight others, after leading protests against environmental destruction in Ogoniland. Bassey carries that legacy with him. “The seeds that Ken Saro-Wiwa sowed have germinated and borne fruit in ways that some people may choose to ignore,” he says. “His campaigns and writings helped to sharpen the imagination of the oppressed living in environments devastated by environmental racism and the drive for petrodollars. Significantly, 10 November, the day he was executed, has become an International Day of Remembrance of martyrs of extractivism among activists. Just imagine if we didn’t have the privilege of having someone like him. I tell you, without the work he did things would have been one thousand times worse than they are today.”
Bassey speaks about what a poem can do in a Niger Delta village that a Shell lawsuit cannot. “A lawsuit can restrain the belligerent polluters from going berserk in the environment. It can confirm that a crime has been committed and compel Shell to pay compensation. Poetry, song, and dance are the centerpiece of our culture and life. They represent how we assert our rights and uphold our dignity, and they are the tools we use to shame irreverent or deviant behavior. So, a poem can spark resistance and build movements for change in ways that litigation cannot. Don’t forget that sometimes lawsuits are prosecuted and won or lost on purely technical or procedural bases. Poetry speaks truth and oils the fight against big oil.”
The film follows Bassey from the Niger Delta villages to COP26 in Glasgow, where he tells the crowd, “This is extra time in injury time.” He reflects on whether village elders and UN delegates hear the same poem differently. “UN delegates include the polluters whose numbers keep rising in each new COP,” he says. “It was at COP26 that delegates decided that fossil fuels should be phased down and not phased out. That conclusion would have made a very sad but poor line in a poem. “Outside the polluters, there are indigenous groups, youths, and civil society delegates. “They are immersed in different realities with a common thread tugging at the same strings in their heart: the quest for justice, equity, and the wisdom that points to a livable planet.”
Passing the Torch
Bassey sees continuity rather than rupture in his son’s choice of rap over poetry. “When I listen to Ukpono rap or sing, I see clearly that he is a better poet than I am,” he says. “I hear his poetry before I hear the beats. I see a continuity and a powerful twist in the way of contributing to movement building. His approach gives life to some lines that have appeared in a number of my poems where I write of retreating footsteps in marketplaces. His rap replaces that with insistent and advancing dance steps in the justice movement. His craft also validates the notion that revolutions must be fun.”
Bassey also reflects on hearing his own decades of testimony returned to him in someone else’s grief, speaking specifically about Barinedum. “She epitomizes the Niger Delta story and so powerfully brings to me pictures that aren’t easy to conjure and a hope that is not easy to sabotage,” he says. “Her vulnerability and toughness combine to assure me that the mission will be accomplished. In the muck of exploitation, expropriation, and despoliation, our people are still unbowed, undefeated.”
The film also captures the question of succession. Bassey is approaching 70, and he wonders who will carry on the struggle. “I have been thinking about life’s transitioning for a long, long time,” he says. “As the days get nearer, my vision becomes clearer. But the question remains until I get to say the final Amen. The film provided a lot of time to reflect on the questions. So, yes, the question is now in a sharper frame because the film helped put things in a format that is not transient, not altered by time.”
Hope as Practice
Dyrvik reflects on what the film has taught her. “When you work on a project for so long, and this intensely, I think it’s only natural that you grow with it,” she says. “The most important lesson this film has taught me was to really give it the time it needed. I learned a lot about resilience, which is a poetic reflection of what the film itself is about. It also really made me understand the power we have as humans and as creatives. Nothing happens unless you make it happen, and we made this happen year after year of working together, inspiring each other, and pushing each other.”
Sheffield was an emotional experience for her. “I think when you are working for so long on something, you start doubting pretty much everything, first of all yourself,” she says. “It was very emotional for me to realize that the audience really connected with Nnimmo, Barinedum, Odudu, Ukpono, and Eraks and felt for them the same things I felt: love for their poetry, but also simply for them as people. Some people even felt inspired to write. If there is one thing the audience response told me, it’s that I didn’t already know it. It’s perhaps that now the film belongs not only to those of us who made it but to everybody.”
Looking ahead, Dyrvik is developing a fiction feature set on the Italian-French border where she grew up, a different, more personal project. But making Hope Is a Word has changed how she thinks about everything. “I keep thinking about Barinedum’s words, ‘Yours is like a second sympathy.’ I have the first empathy. I feel it first. What you are feeling is just the pain I am expressing, not the one I am feeling,’” Dyrvik says. “I want to keep exploring those boundaries: how do we communicate as humans, through the separate containers of our own bodies and our own realities? How do we share the things that cannot be expressed? How can we use words, images, and silences to create shared realities and spaces in which we feel we are together?”
For Bassey, the film has been an unexpected gift. “I never imagined that could happen. That it has is a surprise to me, but not strange,” he says. “The process of making the film birthed a programme of culture and community in my organization, HOMEF. I get more convinced over time that preserving the environment is key to preserving cultures and, by extension, life. The long silences and my notebook capture the essence of who I am, a very private person, an introspective man who loves silences and capturing thoughts in written form. I should add that explaining poetry through silences is a craft that only Maria and Anita could deploy this way.”
The film ends with Bassey asking whether the younger generation can carry the struggle forward. Now that audiences in Sheffield have seen that question posed on screen, he is asked if anyone’s answer has surprised him. “The audiences in Sheffield did not only see the film but were also able to interact with Barinedum and OduduAbasi, who featured prominently in the film,” he says. “Spoken or unspoken, I will be surprised if they do not see that my role is now basically that of a cheerleader accompanying and measuring the younger generation as they embark on the journey of fighting for justice.”
Hope Is a Word is ultimately about more than poetry or oil. It is about people who refuse to surrender. In the shadow of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s mausoleum and across the communities of the Niger Delta, a new generation is finding its voice through poetry, carrying forward a struggle that began long before them. The film’s title captures its central idea: hope is not simply something to feel. It is something to practice.