Olaniran never formally trained as a filmmaker. Something subversive, outrageous and defiantly local about the film also evokes early John Waters, who made all of his movies in Baltimore: Olanian's cast and crew are all based in Flint and Detroit. Leon's been imprisoned by an affectless bureaucrat, standing in for a state that's allowed Flint's water to be poisoned for nearly a decade. Tunde the character searches for Leon in the movie that might remind viewers at various points of Get Out and A Wrinkle in Time. 'What if the person I knew did not have to die the way they did?' 'Senseless does not even begin to describe it,' they say, adding that the movie fulfilled a deep, fantastical longing for a different kind of ending for the young man. But in real life, Olaniran says, Leon was killed. In the movie Made A Universe, Leon is abducted.

'And I think the way my mom raised me was really to think, what is the structure that they're living in and would lead them to make these kinds of choices? 'Leon is based on a person who lived in my neighborhood and robbed us continually,' Olaniran explains. Olaniran comes from a working-class family with a grandfather who built cars on Flint's assembly lines, a dad who immigrated from Nigeria and a mom who worked for labor unions and influenced the main storyline in Made A Universe, about a teenage boy named Leon. 'Tunde is a version of me, who is an artist, who lives in a Flint-esque place who like me is very obsessed with comic books.' 'This is the first film I've written and directed, really,' Olaniran says, who also plays the main character. Olaniran, who's 35, is a planet of a person – the type other people orbit around. A still from Tunde Olaniran's new film playing at the Cranbrook Institute of Art Cranbrook Institute of Art It exuberantly -and pointedly - combines tropes from horror movies and TikTok videos to comment on serious issues such as environmental injustice and the carceral state. Made a Universe is partly a short movie, and partly an exhibition of what looks like pieces of its set: artifacts of furniture, old cars and unpaid bills that combine science fiction and social realism. Their first show, Made A Universe, just opened at the Cranbrook Art Museum near Detroit. Tunde Olaniran is a musician, filmmaker and artist who grew up in Flint, Michigan. Listen Artist Tunde Olaniran Steven Piper | Tunde OlaniranĪ Midwestern museum known for mid-century design may have found the next big art world star.

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