Review: ‘My Father’s Shadow’
2025 / Dir. Akinola Davies Jr.
☆ 4.5/5
Watch if you like: Aftersun, Moonlight, Bicycle Thieves, and the feeling of craving ice cream but knowing you can only have some if you buy your stupid brother one too but he should stop being a bum and get his own money—so no one gets ice cream and no one is happy.
The first Nigerian film to compete at the Cannes Film Festival, My Father’s Shadow is a heart-wrenching, semi-autobiographical story of two young boys who travel with their father to Lagos for the first time on what turns out to be the day the country’s military dictatorship nullified the results of their 1993 election to preserve power. For the two boys, played by actual brothers Godwin and Chibuike Egbo, their father (Sope Dirisu) is an otherworldly mystery, often absent, trying to earn a meager living for his family amid a country with surging prices, unreliable electricity, and gasoline shortages.
Told from the perspective of the two boys, the film is quite the sensory experience, drifting from their father to the new sights that await them in the big city, and only understanding bits of the interactions their father has with strangers the boys have never met that their father seems to know intimately well. There’s both a sense of wonder in the movie and creeping dread as the camera drifts ominously towards caravans of soldiers entering the city or ants hauling away a dead meal. Particularly for a feature-length debut, Davies Jr.’s direction and script (co-written with his brother Wale) are impeccable, operating on so many levels from the personal to the political. While it will rip your heart out of its chest, My Father’s Shadow is a must-see.