Kunle Afolayan

Kunle Afolayan is of Igbomina-Yoruba descent, from Kwara State.[3][4][5] He is the son of the famous theatre and film director cum producer Ade Love. He majored in economics and started out working in a bank while doing some casual acting, before deciding to move into full-time filmmaking and taking a course at the New York Film Academy.[5] Since 2005 he has been active in the Nigerian film industry. He has made several extremely popular titles including: The Figurine: Araromire which was in the Yoruba and English languages and Phone Swap which featured Wale Ojo, Joke Silva, Nse Ikpe Etim and the legendary Chika Okpala. The Figurine won five major awards in the African Film Academy and experienced tremendous success in the Nigerian movie theaters.[4]

Kunle Afolayan appeared at the Subversive Film Festival in 2011 where he represented Nigerian film industry, said, in 2009, to be the world's second largest,[6] with his colleague Zeb Ejiro.[4] In May 2013, Phone Swap premiered in France at the first edition of NollywoodWeek Paris and won the Public Choice Award.[7] Afolayan's father Adeyemi Josiah Afolayan (Ade-Love) was a Nigerian artist of the second half of the 20th century who worked in traveling theater, then turned to the film-making industry.[8]

Kunle is married to Tolu and they have four children.[9][10] He identifies as a Free-thinker.[11]

Kunle Afolayan is silently doing well in the Nigerian movie industry where he recently got himself a very unusual car – Thunderbird Ford 1965. The model is the fourth generation of the Ford Thunderbird which is a large personal luxury car produced by Ford.

On 6 April 2015, Afolayan posted a tweet which implied that Igbos were the majority group behind copyright infringement in Nigeria. The backlash from fans led to an apology from Afolayan and an explanation that he was concerned about the piracy of his films, and most especially threats on the potential release of unlicensed copies of October 1, his latest film at the time.[12][13] Shortly after his outburst, pirated copies of October 1 hit the market on 13 April 2015.[14]

In an interview with Cable magazine,[15] Afolayan was quoted as saying he does not watch Nigerian movies; ″Truth be told, I hardly watch them because I am keen on watching movies that will challenge me and change my orientation about certain things.″ and this led to him receiving several heated responses from fans and some colleagues in the Nigerian movie industry.[16] Days after this News broke, Afolayan shared a video on social media where he announced that he had been taken out of context and then tried to set the record straight[17]

Afolayan is the CEO of Golden Effects Pictures, a Nigerian film and production company incorporated in 2005. [18][19] Ambassador Audu Kadiri, Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) office in Geneva said, "the acclaimed producer came to limelight as a film producer in Nigeria when he founded the Golden Effect Pictures Limited, a film production company that produces and releases high-quality films."[20] The company's feature films include Irapada, The Figurine, Phone Swap,[21] October 1, Roti, Omugwo, The Tribunal, The CEO and Mokalik.[18]