Cinema seems more suited to recollection than any other art form. Unlike photography, which deals in still images, film unfolds across time, evoking more powerfully the eerie feeling of being pulled into the past and finding no solace there, only the uncanny realisation that a lot of things have changed and yet nothing truly has.
We humans hardly recall events in whole cloth. Instead, scenes are assembled from fragments: a line from a poem studied in school, the smell of mother’s perfume, the patter of rain on the roof at nighttime, equally soothing and haunting, the aroma of Sunday afternoon jollof…all these are pieces of a childhood.
In My Father’s Shadow, Akinola Davies Jr. assembles such fragments into a mosaic, revisiting a tumultuous period in the history of a country and a family.
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The film takes place in Lagos, Nigeria, during the political upheaval of June 1993. Folarin (Sope Dirisu) is the father of two boys, Remi and Akin, aged eleven and eight, respectively. They rarely see him, as he works in the city and appears only occasionally, like a blue moon slipping in and out of thick clouds. The film begins on such a morning. Their father shows up unannounced while their mother (Wini Efon) is out and asks if the boys have been touching his things. They answer in the negative. Stranger still is his sudden announcement that he is returning to Lagos. This time, however, the boys will go with him.
This is the purpose of their journey: Folarin is owed six months’ salary at work and is determined to collect it that very day. His determination is met with nothing but delay and disappointment as the country almost seems engineered to generate maximum frustration in the average citizen.
And June 1993 was a time of maximum frustration indeed. After the nation had held, for all intents and purposes, a free and fair election to transition from military rule to a democratic government, the Ibrahim Babaginda regime was determined to hold onto power for as long as possible, against the wishes of the people. The votes were counted, and MKO Abiola had won 19 out of 30 states, including the Federal Capital Territory. Still, the whole country was on edge. There was a sense that the only way the military was going out was kicking and screaming.
My Father’s Shadow captures this atmosphere of frayed nerves in vivid detail. On the bus to Lagos, passengers argue about the future of Nigeria. Some of them are firmly on the side of the junta– one such man keeps echoing, “We have a problem of indiscipline in this country,” and surely the antidote to that must be the iron hand of the regime. Folarin has great disdain for the military and their unchecked use of power, and wants them out of office for good. Others are not so optimistic. There is talk of a massacre at Bonny Camp, and the military is seen parading the city, appearing as menacing as always. They glare at Folarin, and he glares right back, holding his head high.
The story is told mainly from the boys’ point of view. At each turn, the brothers come face to face with both the agony and the allure of city life and the political situation of the country. More importantly, they also catch a glimpse into their father’s life, the world of adults, where nothing makes much sense. Up is down, down is sideways, and there are no easy answers.
Due to his absence, Folarin has become something of a myth to his sons, a figure of inscrutable motivations, impossible to understand. Their day with him only deepens this mystery. The more they find out about his life and activities, the less clear things appear.
“Do you love Mommy?” Akin asks Folarin, unable to contain his bewilderment. When his Father assures him that he does, in fact, love their mother, the younger son replies, “But she’s always sad.” Folarin has to explain that he leaves home for long stretches of time because he needs to earn money to take care of the family. Without a university degree, Lagos is his best bet as an unskilled worker. Akin’s retort ends the conversation: “But they don’t even pay you.”
This scene takes place at an amusement park where Folarin has taken his boys after trying in vain to see his boss. From there, they go to the beach and have a wonderful time in the water in a shot that recalls Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, where Folarin, a strong and comforting presence, holds his sons steady in the water as they splash around.
Sope Dirisu is perfect as Folarin, a man in an imperfect situation who is determined to do right by his family. There is regret in his eyes, but also hope. He wishes he didn’t have to make such heavy sacrifices, but he can only hope his efforts are not in vain. He hopes his sons get to live in a country conducive to their diligence and their dreams. He is gentle with Remi and Akin but also firm, never passing up the opportunity to teach a lesson or fill them in on their familial and national history. Pointing at the National Theatre, he says, “Your mother used to come here a lot to see plays.” The boys want to go inside, but the day is far spent, and they have to move on. They are getting a crash course, after all, not a complete education.
Director Akinola presents the story as a series of vignettes where joy, pain, and the uncanny intermingle. At the beach, shots of white garment people in fervent prayer are juxtaposed with a flock of birds in the sky, Folarin getting a nosebleed, and people cutting into a beached whale with a madness. This montage (and the editing throughout the film) relays the surreal nature of Nigerian society. According to Ursula LeGuin, “the artist deals with what cannot be said in words.” The artist whose medium is film does this with images and sound.
There is a distinctly ineffable quality to being Nigerian, especially at the point in history when the film is set, and Davies’s directorial style reflects this. After establishing a sense of time and place with compelling dialogue and production design, the director then moves beyond words and mise-en-scène to create a haunting atmosphere that completely immerses the audience. This surrealist slant is what ultimately gives the film its edge. The ambient score puts us in the minds of Remi and Akin, and its discordant tones echo their confusion.
The screenplay, written by Akinola Davies Jr, with his brother, Wale Davies, intersperses tender moments among scenes of hard conversations and harsh realities. On the bus to Lagos, one passenger complains about a foul smell, and Folarin turns to his sons to inquire who farted. They deny it, of course, smiling from embarrassment. This same scene ends when the bus suddenly comes to a halt because there is no more fuel in it, because petrol is scarce in the country.
The cinematography (credited to Jermaine Edwards), when they are at home, is smooth and steady in its movements. But once they leave the familiarity of their neighbourhood for the unknowns of Lagos, the framing shifts to a more handheld style, occasionally even shaky. Shot on 16mm, the film’s grain and texture evoke nostalgia in a way that a glossy look never could.
Remi and Akin, in their childlike innocence, are not attuned to the idiosyncrasies of grown-ups. Their dad and other adults frequently go off to the side to speak in private, and the boys have to watch from afar, guessing at what is being said. At a bar, Remi catches his father and a waitress speaking in hushed tones. There’s more to their interaction than meets the eye, and the look on Remi’s face is that of a child who has just realised that his father, a larger-than-life figure, isn’t perfect in the slightest.
The production design has done a great job transporting the audience back to the 90s with posters of Rashidi Yekini, old designs of Fanta bottles, and posters announcing era-appropriate Christian revival services. The costumes also speak volumes. Folarin’s purple striped shirt with its rolled sleeves hangs on his frame with fading elegance.
Godwin Chiemerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo, who are brothers in real life are endlessly convincing as Remi and Akin, from their childlike innocence (such as when Remi asks his father, “If you have to leave us because you love us, is that why we cannot see God?”) to moments of childish stubbornness like refusing to share their yoghurt. These scenes are not only relatable but also honest. Too often, children are written to either be extremely precocious or impeccable in character, but there is none of that here.
The term “rememory” comes from Toni Morrison. Featured in the author’s 1987 novel Beloved, rememory refers to a reassembling of “the body, the family, the population of the past.”
Davies Jr. has done that here. In digging up fragments of personal and collective histories, he has told a moving story about fatherhood, memory, and the Nigerian experience.
Morrison writes about rememory: “Nobody in the book can bear too long to dwell on the past; nobody can avoid it. There is no reliable literary, journalistic, or scholarly history available to them to help them because they are living in a society and a system in which the conquerors write the narrative of their lives.”
In Nigeria, reliable sources are available, but they are rarely prioritised in schools. How many 18-year-olds today can give even vague accounts of pivotal moments in the nation’s history, such as those that took place in 1993? Art can be a window into the past, offering not only facts and figures but also a mood; the year 1993 stops being an abstract point in time and becomes a living memory you can step back into.
Sitting in the theatre, watching the mass of people erupt in response to the annulment of the elections, and the chaos that follows, I couldn’t help but remember October 2020 and the many ways things have not changed much, even with all the time that has passed. Many consider the events of June 1993 to be the birth of the current Nigerian political climate, and although the film doesn’t explicitly say that this is how we got here, the audience will connect the dots nonetheless.
My Father’s Shadow had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard category. That alone would have been a feat, but it went on to be awarded a Caméra d’Or Special Mention, the first ever Nigerian film to do so.
Well-deserved. Please, show this film to everyone you can.
My Father’s Shadow premiered in cinemas on September 19.
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Side Musings
- One of the passengers on the bus says, “Nigeria go better. If e no better for our time, e go better for our children time.” I truly did not know how to react to that.
- This film and its atmosphere reminded me of the works of Chukwu Martin, particularly Mr. Gbenga’s Hard Drive and Oga Mike, two films with hapless, tragic heroes at war with the very state of being Nigerian.
- The song which plays during the credits has been stuck in my head all week.
- Folarin’s confrontation with the soldier had me legitimately frozen in my seat.
- All the performances from the supporting cast ring true: Greg Ojefua as Emeka, Folarin’s colleague, Uzoamaka Power as Abike, Tosin Adeyemi as Aunty Seyi, all put their best foot forward.
- As children, we literally look up to our parents and this film brought back memories of being left out of adult conversations but gleaning bits and pieces nonetheless.
