Hope is a Word

In Nigeria’s Niger Delta, poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey gathers a new generation of writers to turn memory, anger and hope into poetry, testimony and resistance.

In Nigeria’s Niger Delta, decades of oil extraction have left a landscape marked by spills, gas flaring, displacement and grief. Poet, architect and activist Nnimmo Bassey has spent his life confronting that damage, using language as both witness and weapon. Now, approaching 70, he turns towards a younger generation growing up in the long aftermath.

In her directorial debut, Maria Galliani Dyrvik follows Bassey as he gathers emerging writers into spaces of listening, memory and creative risk. Among them are Barinedum, from the heavily polluted Ogoni region, and Bassey’s son Ukpono, a young rapper finding his own form of expression. Through workshops, conversations and poems in progress, the film asks what it means to inherit a struggle, and how art might help transform pain into collective power.

Film Details

Screened at LandxSea

About the Filmmaker

Maria Galliani Dyrvik

Maria Galliani Dyrvik grew up between the Norwegian fjords and the Italian Alps, and has worked across Norway, Italy and the UK. She's written and directed animations and short documentaries screened at festivals including Interfilm Berlin and Nordisk Panorama, alongside collaborative projects from audio installations to documentaries — among them Modus Vivendi (2025), on Yugoslav survivors of SS labour camps in Northern Norway, and web-doc series Vi e Brann, nominated for the 2023 Norwegian media prize. Hope Is a Word is her first documentary feature.