Niyi Towolawi

Niyi Towolawi is a British filmmaker and writer/director of TWisTED and Turning Point. He is a filmmaker introducing the Nollywood audience to international cinema, with his film production.

Towolawi is of Yoruba, Nigerian descent, and grew up in Canning Town, East London. He is a Mathematics graduate from the University of Manchester, where he played basketball and studied Shaolin Kung Fu. He is known for being a keen jazz musician and plays numerous musical instruments.

He began producing music in high school and had a number of white labels releases at the height of the UK Garage scene, and worked with notable artistes including a pre-stardom D'Banj, published under HekCentrik Music. He worked as a software developer, headhunted by some of the world's leading organisations, after graduating from university, where he continued producing music and shooting numerous music videos, in a cinematic style that evolved into making feature films.

He has been at the forefront of the digital cinematography revolution since 2005 shooting then with 35mm adapters on camcorders, a D-I-Y approach that pre-dates the digital cinema cameras and video DSLR generation of today. His film, "TWisTED" was one of the first to project digitally when it premiered at Odeon, Surrey Quays in 2007, with support from the UK Film Council.

His films centre around people of African origin in the Diaspora. His plotlines explore elements of multi-dimensional relationships along ethnic, gender, or taboo issues, and often feature characters of subjective motives. He lists Ridley Scott as his all-time favourite director.