In 'My Father's Shadow,' family memory and Nigerian history are resurrected

The British Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr. and his brother Wale were both toddlers when their father died. As adults, they could hardly remember him. Then Wale had an idea for movie. What if, by some movie miracle, they had gotten to spend a day with their dad?

In “My Father’s Shadow,” the Davies brothers pay tribute to him in a shattering father-son tale set across such a day in Nigeria. The film, Akinola's directing debut, has gone on to become one of the most acclaimed films of the past year, making history at the Cannes Film Festival and winning awards around the world.

A powerfully autobiographic work resonate with memory and loss, “My Father's Shadow” is the culmination of more than a decade’s worth of the Davies' brothers wondering. Wale first sent Akinola a script in 2012. Wale had never before written a movie script; Akinola had never read one.

“With zero context, he sent it to me and I just had this real emotional reaction,” Akinola Davies said in an interview at last year in Cannes. “I actually cried when I read it because I had never conceived of the idea of spending a day with my father and what we would say to him and what he would be like.”

In the film, set over a single day in Lagos in 1993, “Gangs of London” actor Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù plays the father, Folarin. At the family’s home outside Lagos, the young brothers (Chibuike Marvellous Egbo and Godwin Egbo) return home to unexpectedly find him inside. They hardly ever see him — he works in Lagos — but Folarin takes them along on a trip in the city that will be revelatory for the boys.

It's set on a pivotal day for Nigeria, when democracy is hanging in the balance. Having taken power in a coup, Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida refuses to accept the results of a democratic election. “My Father's Shadow” evolves as not just a conjured portrait of Davies' father, but of a national moment of hope. In both cases, the dream is fleeting.

A first for Nigeria

At its Cannes debut last May, “My Father’s Shadow” made history. It was the first Nigerian film in the festival's official selection, a milestone that Nigeria, a country with its own large film industry, nicknamed Nollywood, celebrated with a new presence at the global cinema gathering.

“It means a lot to people back in Nigeria. It means we can exist on these platforms and our stories can exist in these spaces,” said Davies. “It’s a testament to talent that’s around in Nigeria. It’s a testament to the stories that are there. It’s a testament to the industry that’s flourishing.”

“My Father’s Shadow,” which Mubi releases in North American theaters Friday, is a British-Nigerian production that the U.K. selected for its Oscar submission. It received 12 nominations from the British Independent Film Awards. Davies, who lives in London, is also nominated for best British debut by the BAFTAs. At the Gotham Awards in New York, Davies won breakthrough director and Dìrísù won outstanding lead performance.

By any measure, it's a remarkable distance for a movie made independently in Nigeria to go.

“The Nigerian press asks me a lot if the film is Nollywood or not Nollywood. I would say it is because all the technicians work in Nollywood,” said Davies. “You can’t borrow people from that whole industry and say it’s not part of it.”

Shot in Lagos, “My Father's Shadow” gets a tremendous amount of its texture and atmosphere from Nigeria. “Point a camera at anything in Lagos, and it’s so cinematic,” Davies says.

“I have this real sense of romance for Nigeria,” he adds. “Everyone’s like, ‘It’s super chaotic,’ but for me it’s actually very still. Just driving around in the car feels really cinematic to me. I just take pictures of people all the time.”

Uncovering family memory

When Akinola was 20 months old and Wale was 4 years old, their father rapidly developed epilepsy and died during a seizure while lying in bed next to their mother. To create the fictional version of their father, the Davies brothers tried to remember what they could. They tried to separate their real memories from their imagined ones.

“It’s kind of the confluence of memory, dream and hearsay,” says Davies, whose named after his dad. “How do you work through all of that to create a portrait?”

“My Father’s Shadow” represents the realization of Davies’ filmmaking aspirations. His BAFTA-nominated short “Lizard” got him on the radar in Britain's film industry. But “My Father's Shadow” has firmly established him as a major up-and-coming director.

Yet for Davies, all the accolades don't come close to what the movie has meant for him and his family.

“Being the age I am, I’ve done my grieving,” Davies says. “But just before we shot, I realized I was still grieving. Our prep started about a week after the anniversary of my dad’s passing. Every year, my mum calls me or texts me. I took my brother to his grave, put flowers down and made kind of a ceremony out of it.”

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This story first moved May 19, 2025. It was resent on Feb. 11, 2025, ahead of the movie’s release in North America.