DIRECTOR: Akinola Davies Jr.
STARRING: Sope Dirisu, Godwin Egbo, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo, Efon Wini
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 33 minutes
LANGUAGE: Yoruba, Nigerian Pidgin
PLOT: Brothers Remi and Akin receive an unexpected gift: a single day with their estranged father, Folarin. Together, they embark on a journey through Lagos, experiencing the city’s vastness and complexity for the first time while witnessing the challenges their father must navigate simply to provide for them. Their adventure unfolds against the backdrop of the pivotal 1993 presidential election results, which cast uncertainty over whether Folarin will even be able to get his sons safely home.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Lagos, Nigeria
To check out all previous submissions for United Kingdom, click HERE.
STARRING: Sope Dirisu, Godwin Egbo, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo, Efon Wini
RUNNING TIME: 1 hr 33 minutes
LANGUAGE: Yoruba, Nigerian Pidgin
PLOT: Brothers Remi and Akin receive an unexpected gift: a single day with their estranged father, Folarin. Together, they embark on a journey through Lagos, experiencing the city’s vastness and complexity for the first time while witnessing the challenges their father must navigate simply to provide for them. Their adventure unfolds against the backdrop of the pivotal 1993 presidential election results, which cast uncertainty over whether Folarin will even be able to get his sons safely home.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Lagos, Nigeria
To check out all previous submissions for United Kingdom, click HERE.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Everything is sacrifice. You just have to pray you don't sacrifice the wrong thing."
Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father's Shadow is a quietly affecting and deeply atmospheric debut that captures a single day in the lives of two young brothers reconnecting with their estranged father. Set in 1993 Lagos, the film takes a coming-of-age premise and grounds it in a politically charged moment, allowing the personal and political to unfold in parallel. Rather than relying on conventional drama or sweeping emotional exposition, Davies Jr. crafts a film that breathes through observation, glances, gestures, movement through crowded streets, and the sounds of a city in flux. This understated approach gives the film a documentary-like immediacy, allowing viewers to experience Lagos through the wide, curious eyes of its young protagonists.
Davies Jr. situates Lagos not merely as a backdrop but as a character in its own right. The city pulses with energy, contradictions, and possibility, and the film’s handheld visual style reinforces this sense of immersion. Remi and Akin encounter Lagos for the first time as something monumental, unpredictable, harsh, but also vibrant and alive. Their father, Folarin, moves through this landscape with a quiet weariness, balancing the demands of survival, responsibility, and the emotional distance that time and absence have carved between him and his sons. Each stop on their journey, markets, bus queues, street corners, registers as a moment of discovery for the brothers and a point of stress or challenge for Folarin. Without heavy dialogue, the audience feels the weight he carries simply trying to provide.
The looming tension of the 1993 presidential election results adds a subtle but powerful layer to the narrative. Instead of turning the election into a main plotline, the film lets it exist as a background hum of instability, not unlike the constant unpredictability of life for working-class Nigerians in the early 1990s. Radios blare updates, crowds react, and the city shifts around the family, threatening to upend even their modest attempt at connection. The political uncertainty mirrors the emotional one: can Folarin get his sons' home? And even if he can, is one day enough to rebuild what has been lost?
My Father's Shadow is a film about presence, what it means to show up, even imperfectly. Davies Jr. shows that love in constrained circumstances may not look grand or triumphant; it might look like a day spent trying, navigating a city that barely makes room for vulnerability. The film’s main point is not the success of a single day but the profound significance of the attempt itself: the recognition that even fractured relationships carry the possibility of tenderness, and that small, ordinary moments can define a childhood just as powerfully as the ones marked by absence.
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Everything is sacrifice. You just have to pray you don't sacrifice the wrong thing."
Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father's Shadow is a quietly affecting and deeply atmospheric debut that captures a single day in the lives of two young brothers reconnecting with their estranged father. Set in 1993 Lagos, the film takes a coming-of-age premise and grounds it in a politically charged moment, allowing the personal and political to unfold in parallel. Rather than relying on conventional drama or sweeping emotional exposition, Davies Jr. crafts a film that breathes through observation, glances, gestures, movement through crowded streets, and the sounds of a city in flux. This understated approach gives the film a documentary-like immediacy, allowing viewers to experience Lagos through the wide, curious eyes of its young protagonists.
Davies Jr. situates Lagos not merely as a backdrop but as a character in its own right. The city pulses with energy, contradictions, and possibility, and the film’s handheld visual style reinforces this sense of immersion. Remi and Akin encounter Lagos for the first time as something monumental, unpredictable, harsh, but also vibrant and alive. Their father, Folarin, moves through this landscape with a quiet weariness, balancing the demands of survival, responsibility, and the emotional distance that time and absence have carved between him and his sons. Each stop on their journey, markets, bus queues, street corners, registers as a moment of discovery for the brothers and a point of stress or challenge for Folarin. Without heavy dialogue, the audience feels the weight he carries simply trying to provide.
The looming tension of the 1993 presidential election results adds a subtle but powerful layer to the narrative. Instead of turning the election into a main plotline, the film lets it exist as a background hum of instability, not unlike the constant unpredictability of life for working-class Nigerians in the early 1990s. Radios blare updates, crowds react, and the city shifts around the family, threatening to upend even their modest attempt at connection. The political uncertainty mirrors the emotional one: can Folarin get his sons' home? And even if he can, is one day enough to rebuild what has been lost?
My Father's Shadow is a film about presence, what it means to show up, even imperfectly. Davies Jr. shows that love in constrained circumstances may not look grand or triumphant; it might look like a day spent trying, navigating a city that barely makes room for vulnerability. The film’s main point is not the success of a single day but the profound significance of the attempt itself: the recognition that even fractured relationships carry the possibility of tenderness, and that small, ordinary moments can define a childhood just as powerfully as the ones marked by absence.
