Kunle Afolayan and the Rise of New Nigerian Cinema

        

In the latest installment of our Cinema Africa series, we catch up with Nigerian actor and director Kunle Afolayan ahead of his conversation with Genevieve Nnaji at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Nollywood is taking centerstage this year as the focus of TIFF’s annual City to City program.

If the past year has proven anything, it’s that Nigeria’s music industry has arrived on the world stage. Wizkid features on and co-produced the song of the summer. Davido packed out New York City’s historic Lincoln Center. Tiwa Savage recently joined the ranks of Janelle Monae’s kickass Fem The Future brunch.

Could film be the next big Nigerian export? This month’s Toronto International Film Festival seems to suggest so.

Lagos is the focus of TIFF’s City to City spotlight, an annual program which showcases filmmakers living and working in a selected city around the world. “Bigger budgets, greater artistic ambition – the new cinema of Lagos is bold, exciting, and ready to take its place on the international stage,” the festival’s Artistic Director and City to City curator, Cameron Bailey, said of the decision to bring Nollywood’s “new wave” to TIFF.

An unprecedented eight Nigerian films are premiering this month in Toronto. And as Okayafrica’s Antoinette Isama pointed out, TIFF this year is like one big Nigerian family reunion. Take David Oyelowo for instance. The Queen of Katwe and A United Kingdom star beamed with pride as he addressed a crowd of Nigerians last week in Toronto: “This is the first time, in so long, I’ve been in a room with people who can say my name properly. So I stand before you today as DAVID OYETOKUNBO OYELOWO,” the actor proclaimed.

Indeed, an extraordinary number of heavyweights and fresh faces of Nigerian cinema alike have descended upon The 6. One such star is Kunle Afolayan, the actor and director hailed by The New York Times as the Scorsese of Lagos. In the decade since Afolayan, 41, left the banking world to fill what he saw as a gap in Nigerian film, Nollywood has undergone a creative renaissance. Afolayan brought production value and innovative release methods to an industry once known for its low-budget tropes and bootleg releases.

No stranger to the international festival scene, Afolayan’s first film premiered at the 2006 BFI London Film Festival and went on to play in Nigerian multiplex cinemas–something unheard of at the time.

His sophomore feature, the supernatural suspense thriller The Figurine, premiered to critical acclaim at the 2009 Rotterdam International Film Festival and proved that Nigerian filmmakers need not rely on DVD sales as their main source of revenue. At the time, Africa is a Country’s Sean Jacobs wondered if it was the “first ‘quality’ feature film out of Nollywood.”

With the dawn of Afolayan, Nollywood had officially made it to the silver screen. And with big blockbuster budgets. Afolayan’s fourth movie, the 2014 Nigerian Independence Day thriller October 1, reportedly had a budget of about ₦330 million (just over $1,000,000 USD).

Eleven years since his film career took off, the director is thinking bigger with each project he takes on. His latest venture, The CEO, premiered 30,000 feet in the air on an Air-France flight from Lagos to Paris for the city’s NollywoodWeek film festival.

We caught up with Afolayan over the phone on Sunday, just a few hours ahead of his talk with actor-singer Genevieve Nnaji.