Two things that inspired me to make Anikulapo – Kunle Afolayan opens up; Sola Sobowale backs him

Filmmaker Kunle Afolayan has revealed the inspiration behind the movie Anikulapo with actress Sola Sobowale backing him up.

The duo who played each other’s love interest in the film disclosed this in a video uploaded to Youtube on Friday, October 14.  According to Kunle Afolayan:

“What inspired me? One, I would say Nigeria and two, also stories that really depict who we are as Nigerians ad Africans but again I am very into originality, authenticity and the Yoruba story, You look around gone are those days when our fathers actually started with the Yoruba films, but now a lot of people would rather do it in English and trust me the Yoruba culture, the Igbo culture, the Hausa culture, the Ibibio culture in fact you would not want to do anything again in English because all these cultures have deep stories that if we start I believe for the next 100 years we won’t finish.”

Joining in the conversation, Sola Sobowale said:

“I actually think no one can tell your story the way you tell your story and there is something about the culture that we are lacking. We are throwing a lot of things away, our children don’t even know where they come from. Those are the things we are losing. I am a typical African woman and I love my language. There is no way I’ll speak English the way oyibo people will speak English. We are colour our culture is colour and there are so many things to learn.”

Kunle Afolayan added:

“We want to use film as a medium to educate, inform and also to entertain and the preseve because the film will preserve the culture so generations to come can always reference it and they get to understand their culture.”

Set in the 17th century Oyo kingdom and directed by Kunle Afolayan, Anikulapo is the story of Saro, a travelling cloth weaver, who was beaten to death for having an affair with the Alaafin’s youngest wife Queen.

The movie also stars Bimbo Ademoye, Kunle Remi, Taiwo Hassan, Adebayo Salami, Dele Odule, Yinka Quadri, Faithia Williams, Ronke Oshodi-Oke, Mr Macaroni, Sunday Omobolanle, Toyin Afolayan, Kareem Adepoju and Hakeem Kae-Kazim.