My Father's Shadow
First screened and reviewed in October 2025
Director: Akinola Davies. Cast: Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo, Godwin Egbo, Efòn Wini, Uzoamaka Power. Screenplay: Akinola Davies and Wale Davies. In Brief:
Uneven but increasingly powerful on personal and political fronts. Let down by a shaky start and abrupt finish.
VOR:⑤
I had quibbles with the execution of a still-relevant story, but the stylistic moxie and the overall muscularity and courage are the takeaways.
Potently atmospheric family mystery/political timebomb. Poignant overall, if too blunt at times, hazy at others. Dìrísù rises mightily to the demanding double occasion of playing a flesh-amd-blood father in a series of practical binds as well as an Aftersun-y avatar of painful, loving, retrospective memories.
I'd say the film works best when it trusts its performers, its material, and its audience to sense that combination of memory and mythology that structures the whole piece and to Intuit unspoken secrets and bonds among its characters. When director/cowriter Akinola Davies switches to boldface font in the script or lays on too many memorial flourishes stylistically (film grain, projector noise, sudden collapses of the image, etc.), things can verge on gimmicky, even as I'd still call the overall audiovisual environment one of this movie's notable strengths. Some sequences and arcs stay a little too closeted from the audience's understanding, while others are spelled out more than necessary, which only sometimes has to do with emanating from the kids' perspective. Some of that may be down to cultural and historical familiarity, but I don't think all of it is. And while homage is lovely and apt in the circumstances, Barry Jenkins would be right to ask for a royalty cut for how baldly and at length Davies has restaged the ocean swimming sequence of Moonlight.
All that said, My Father's Shadow has the muscularity of an ambitious, heartfelt, adventurous debut as well as the vulnerability of a still-grieving adult for a parent he lost early. That's a lot to summon in a 93-minute package, and the large constellation of supporting players beyond our central trio works as hard as the aesthetic choices to absorb us in a very palpable and precarious life world. I'm glad Davies's film is getting the festival attention it has, starting at Cannes, and I hope it circulates widely from this point forward. May well be a case where my admiration overtakes my misgivings even more handily if I'm able to revisit it in a few months' time. For now, I'd urge anyone to go—especially U.S. viewers, who will recognize more of our current political context than is comfortable in Davies's first-hand evocation of Nigeria in its early-90s free fall. Grade:B
(I originally wrote this capsule on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)
