My Father’s Shadow ★★★1/2
- 2filmcritics
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
Availability: Now showing in some theaters as part of Oscar screenings. Acquired by MUBI and scheduled to stream there beginning April 10. See JustWatch here for future wider purchase and rental availability.
“I see you in dreams”
Two young boys are invited by their mostly absent father to travel from their village home to spend the day with him in Lagos, a coastal city of 20 million or so, where his errand is to pick up a salary check he’s been owed for months for factory work. Although none of them knows it when they set out, later that day the results of the 1993 contested Nigerian presidential election will be announced.
Folarin (Sope Dirisu) takes his sons Akin (Godwin Chiemerie Egbo) and Remi (front, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo) for a day from their rural village to the teeming city of Lagos, where they will find shadows of their father.
Director Akinola Davies Jr.’s feature debut, based on a screenplay he co-wrote with his brother Wale Davies, is an intriguing entry in the growing subgenre of remote or missing fathers. The child’s eye view, expertly filmed in atmospheric 16mm by Jermaine Edwards, is particularly effective in communicating the inchoate and fragmentary views anyone has of another person. This father, both tough and loving towards his children, is a man of mystery, and not only to his sons.
An intriguing entry in the growing subgenre of remote or missing fathers.
The 8- and 11-year-old siblings, who have nothing else to do, play with bugs, dirt, and sticks, as kids in rural settings will do, exuding a palpable sense of boredom, of emptiness, even as they laconically joust with their hand-drawn paper soldiers. The unexpected appearance in their house of the father, and his surprising offer to take them with him, changes their day into one that will be indelibly inscribed in their memories. They watch wide-eyed as he negotiates with drivers of various transports, is saluted with the nickname Kapo (“boss” or “head” ala Italian, this in Nigerian Pidgin English), and pleads for the money he is owed.
Their father is a maze of secrets.
They—mostly we—see signs of political turmoil. A headline about a massacre at Bonny Camp, sottovoce discussions of the anticipated outcome of the recent election. Might the enigmatic father be part of this? Just as the chaotic, overstimulating urban metropolis—a stark contrast to the dusty stasis of their village—is a revelation barely understood, their father is a maze of secrets, secrets about his personality, his work, his friends (a perplexing vision of a woman in red), his well-being (the unexplained bleeding from his nose), a possible political life.
The beach is a scene of revelation, where Folarin tells his older son, Akin, that he has been named after the father's dead brother, ensuring the brother will not be forgotten.
In a scene reminiscent of the 2016 Oscar winner “Moonlight,” Folarin (the father’s given name) takes Akin, the older son, and Remi to the ocean, where the water is both a baptism (into life’s complexities) and threatening. Folarin tells Akin that Folarin’s older brother drowned, and his spirit felt unrecognized until Akin was named after him. “I see you in dreams,” the father says to his lost brother, a line Akin has whispered to himself in the film’s first scene. Folarin’s revealing homily stops short of being heavy-handed, even as he teaches his sons about being vulnerable, caring for one another, and keeping the dead with us so they are not forgotten. The necklace.
“My Father’s Shadow” is a meditation on memory: the “shadows” we remember from our childhood, what forms us.
The political angles of 1993 Nigeria—the announcement of the election results, claims of “irregularities,” even the gas shortages—resonate with the current political climate in the US, though that congruity is not essential to the plot or theme. “My Father’s Shadow” is a meditation on memory: the “shadows” we remember from our childhood, what forms us. In substance, script, and point of view, it evokes “Aftersun” (2022), “Nickel Boys” (2024), and last year’s “Train Dreams.”
A joint Nigerian-UK production, Davies’ film was submitted by the UK as its entry for Best International Feature Film Oscar, though not nominated. It has a strong protagonist (Sope Dirisu), two compelling child actors (brothers Godwin Chiemerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo), inventive cinematography, and a creative and restrained script. “My Father’s Shadow” is the best small-budget (less than $3.5 million) film you’ll have seen in a long time.
She says: A tiny budget, first-time director, semi-autobiographical, yet sophisticated, with nods to Federico Fellini—an empty amusement park, a beached Leviathan.
He says: Sope Dirisu is leading-man charismatic, common-man ordinary—a powerful, complex presence throughout.
Date: 2025
Director: Akinola Davies Jr.
Starring: Sope Dirisu, Godwin Chiemerie Egbo, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo
Runtime: 93 minutes
Countries: Nigeria, UK
Languages: Nigerian Pidgin English, Yoruba, both subtitled in English
Other Awards: 11 wins and 33 other nominations, including a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer, and the first Nigerian film selected to be screened at Cannes
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