In “My Father’s Shadow,” the deeply shifting debut function of British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr., two younger brothers—Aki (Godwin Egbo) and Remi (Chibuike Marvellous Egbo)—journey with their often-absent father, Fọlárìn (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù), from their rural residence within the Nigerian countryside and into the bustling streets of Lagos, the place they spend a day observing and slowly bonding with the previous man they barely know.
Set on the eve of Nigeria’s 1993 election disaster, as political unrest despatched shockwaves by the nation’s capital, the movie—co-written by Davies and his brother, Wale Davies—was impressed by the connection its creators needed to their very own late father, who died from epilepsy when the 2 of them have been very younger. Constructing on that tragic real-life context, the brothers approached their function as a possibility to revisit a sociopolitical turning level in latest Nigerian historical past and to depict on display screen the emotional vibrancy of ‘90s Lagos as they recalled it from spending time there with their mom all through childhood.
Capturing on location whereas evoking a misplaced time and place in gorgeously textured 16mm, “My Father’s Shadow” is a longing snapshot of a rustic and the individuals who populate it, as a lot as it’s an evocation of 1 household’s intimate reunion. Representing the linguistic panorama of Nigeria with dialogue in Yoruba, Pidgin, and English, in addition to a wealthy cross-section of the nation’s tradition—seen by period-accurate clothes, a swirl of set items, and rapt consideration to the energetic rhythms of the Nigerian capital—the movie additionally includes a magnificent lead efficiency by Dìrísù, who progressively surfaces Fọlárìn’s carefully held anguish and paternal frustration to his youngsters as their day in Lagos attracts to a foreboding shut.
“My Father’s Shadow” first screened on the 2025 Cannes Movie Competition, the place it premiered within the Un Sure Regard part and received the Particular Point out for the Digital camera d’Or prize. Critically acclaimed all through its subsequent tour of the worldwide competition circuit, the movie was later nominated for 12 British Impartial Movie Awards, with Davies Jr. successful the prize for Greatest Director. The movie was additionally chosen as the UK’s Oscar submission for Greatest Worldwide Function, although it didn’t finally make the Academy’s shortlist; the Gothams, nevertheless, awarded the movie two prizes: Breakthrough Director (for Davies Jr.) and Excellent Lead Efficiency (for Dìrísù).
MUBI, which acquired distribution rights for the movie in a number of territories previous to its world premiere, is releasing “My Father’s Shadow” in U.S. theaters beginning Feb. 13. Forward of the discharge, Davies Jr. sat down with RogerEbert.com to debate the visible language of desires, collaborating along with his brother to inform this semi-autobiographical story, the problem of transporting movie out and in of Lagos, and rather more.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“My Father’s Shadow” got here from a deeply private place. What are you able to inform me concerning the means of growing this story, which is rooted in your childhood, right into a function movie alongside your brother, Wale Davies?
We’d made a brief movie, “Lizard,” which received the Sundance Jury Prize, and the response to that movie was extraordinarily overwhelming for us. We hadn’t fairly anticipated successful something; we simply wished to check out making a movie, and the response was unimaginable. It was additionally throughout lockdown.
In occupied with what to do subsequent, we actually wished to create one thing in service of our youthful selves, our households and pals, and the ladies in our lives. And my brother had written the screenplay (for “My Father’s Shadow”) years earlier than. It had an emotional influence on me once I learn it; I assumed, “What higher approach to spend the subsequent few years than creating work collectively and getting higher acquainted as brothers on a subject that we by no means actually spoke about as children?” And so Wale graciously allowed me to develop “My Father’s Shadow” right into a function.
At each level alongside the way in which, there was a degree of understanding of the craft of what we have been doing and the way we wished to form that craft. The movie might have resulted in some ways, however we at all times leaned on being sincere, drawing on ourselves, desirous to be the authors of our story in a means we might be taught from first, earlier than we began utilizing different folks’s materials. That was fairly vital to us, mining ourselves for the story.
When an individual loses a father or mother, there’s a constant elephant within the room, about that one who isn’t there, what their trades have been like, what they have been like as folks. Every time we exit into Lagos, our father’s title at all times reverberates again to us, as a result of he was a larger-than-life character folks knew, apparently. We’d at all times skilled this. We’d go into Lagos, and other people would inform us about our father. It felt like we discovered sufficient over time—being younger males after which adults, listening to extra mature tales—that we might put that into a personality.
For my brother and me, our earliest and solely expertise of our father was taking part in on a mattress with him, which we tried to place within the opening sequence. That’s the one reminiscence we have now. We don’t know whether or not it was a dream, a fabrication, or one thing somebody advised us, however what mattered was that we felt we had that reminiscence. And that was the sensation we have been attempting to place within the movie. We have been attempting to work from a spot of holding today as a reminiscence—nevertheless you see it, whether or not it’s a dream or a ghost story—and wished it to really feel like one thing that the boys palpably had, that they might maintain of their fingers and keep in mind eternally.
Movie is such a lovely medium for connecting. After collaborating as carefully as you probably did along with your brother on the screenplay, how did your dynamic proceed to play out by manufacturing in Lagos, truly making the movie?
That’s a incredible query. I don’t suppose anybody’s requested me that. What I at all times say, which I feel actually works effectively for Wale and me collectively, is that we perceive there must be a division of labor. We each can’t do the identical work. We’ve got strengths and weaknesses. He loves the spoken phrase. He loves the written phrase. He’s one of the vital well-read folks I do know, and he swallows books complete, in nearly one sitting. I’m fairly the other. I do take pleasure in books, however they actually must captivate my creativeness. I would like to have the ability to see the pictures from the phrases. I’m extra aligned with photos, how a specific image can inform a narrative: with what’s within the fore-, mid-, and background of an image, how that communicates what’s within the story. We complement one another very effectively in that means.
In manufacturing, my brother was extra of a producer. He’s very withdrawn. He’d accomplished his fundamental half within the writing, and he left the manufacturing to me—though, inside manufacturing, he’d supply a be aware or two on efficiency, based mostly on how issues have been speculated to be working. I’m very accepting of that inside the course of; I’ve labored in commercials, and dealing with a brother is significantly better than working for a shopper, I’ll let you know that a lot.
Within the edit, it was fully completely different, as a result of my brother wasn’t current. He selected to not be concerned, and the edit is the place you assemble the whole lot you shot and produce the story on paper to the image. My brother’s absence within the edit was fully an train in trusting my imaginative and prescient, trusting how I need to form issues, trusting my inventive aptitude and imaginative and prescient whereas assembling a collaborative crew that would assist me obtain that.
We had an unimaginable editor from Mexico, Omar Castro Guzmán, who works with Lila Avilés lots; he’s made work about grief, about completely different topics, and he actually held my ft to the fireplace, by way of concepts and thematics, particularly this concept of decay, of issues rotting. We use fruit as an analogy: one facet being contemporary, the opposite facet decaying. This concept of the “archive” within the movie was not scripted, so we labored on it collectively, together with the opening montage and the later one on the automobile, when issues collapse. We labored over the thought of a narrative not being linear; once more, he held my ft to the fireplace concerning the story shifting in circles, about piecing a puzzle collectively in the way in which we advised it.
Our relationship was actually based mostly on the basics of belief and of seeing distinctive expertise in one another. I feel my brother’s a genius, and I’ve heard him say as a lot about me; he’s a genius with phrases, and I’ve heard him say the identical about me with photos and pictures. Having that division of labor, mutual respect for creative imaginative and prescient, and a distance that typically means stepping away is vital and has allowed that relationship to proceed to develop, hopefully into the subsequent challenge and plenty of extra after that.
Wale additionally has a small position in “My Father’s Shadow.” He’s a prophet on a bridge, glimpsed sermonizing to passersby. Inside his dialogue, there’s a sentiment I’d wished to ask you about: “Your younger males will see visions. Your previous males will dream desires.”
I really like your consideration to element. That line is sort of a distinguished foreshadowing within the movie. Clearly, in passing, folks can miss it because the raving of this crazed bridge prophet. However in rehearsals, each time we might do a desk learn, up till we solid that position, he would learn that line, and (our casting director) Shaheen Baig would inform him, “You actually ought to act.” He’s a performer, so he’s fairly good with being in entrance of a crowd, in entrance of audiences.
That line, for me, represents a lot. Culturally, as Yoruba folks, we don’t actually consider in linear time. We consider we’re at all times in a spiral of communication—prior to now, current, and future—with our ancestors, with these we haven’t met prior to now, and sooner or later. Desires play a giant half on this. We bookmark the movie with this concept: “I’ll see you in desires.” For us, desires are a portal to part of our unconscious and a type of dialogue that we don’t perceive as a lot as we used to, in occasions far gone. For Yoruba, tribal, and Indigenous folks, these desires do manifest.
Desires come to you at completely different time limits, by way of what you’re feeling. Our mom at all times used to inform us tales of desires, of how the final time she noticed my father was in a dream, and the way he got here and tried to absolve himself of dying. It’s at all times been a language, a shorthand, inside our household, inside our sense of heirlooms and the way in which we discuss issues. The position of dreaming, particularly, is one in every of manifestation and prophecy; folks could be extra intuitive than they notice. They’ll actually lean into frequencies that they’ve turn out to be disconnected from. What we have been attempting to do within the movie is lead the viewers by way of breadcrumbs right into a unconscious mind-set, a peripheral dialogue. It’s not within the characters, nevertheless it’s on the periphery of what’s happening. We have been at all times submissive to the movie’s themes.
I don’t know what the event course of is like in different international locations, however right here within the U.Ok., growing a Nigerian movie with U.Ok. funding will not be simple. Even inside that development, there’s numerous having to account for each line and each body, so the whole lot is by design. Within the movie, the whole lot is intentional. There’s not a single second within the movie that isn’t constructed with the thematics of the movie at play. We trimmed all of the fats. It’s this phrase everybody used to say to me: there’s no self-indulgence within the movie. It’s fully to the bone.
As a director, I additionally must show to the critics, throughout our dialogues, that I do perceive and personal this materials. Consideration to element is one thing we have been studious about. We’re not, we’re not placing somebody. Somebody on Letterboxd wrote that they hate lengthy, lingering photographs in artwork movies, saying they thought there have been some in our movie till they reached the top and realized all of them served a objective. That’s actually what we have been attempting to speak: the whole lot, at each level in life, regardless of how throwaway a second may appear, is a part of this genetic DNA imposing one thing in your psyche as a human being, in your nervous system — and, equally, is one thing we as folks attempt to mirror in movie.
Which is fascinating to me, the diligence of that development, on condition that the thematics of “My Father’s Shadow” have a lot to do with this ephemeral, unconscious sensation. In your private expertise of dreaming, do you discover that you just awaken to recall precisely what you had dreamed about, or does it register extra as these sparkles of emotion and picture? I’m curious how consciously you go about translating that feeling into movie.
Incredible query: I do know so many individuals who dream and keep in mind their desires so vividly, and so they’re capable of translate that into the pictures they create, however I can’t try this. I’m what I’ve discovered to explain as being a lucid dreamer; inside my desires, there’s a facet of management. I can’t management precisely how the dream goes to form up, however once I’m acutely aware of being in a dream, I’ve just a little little bit of company concerning what I do in a dream. Generally, I would get up saying one thing or flailing about as if I’m falling; my accomplice is like, “What’s happening?” (laughs) However the one time that’s occurred is that if I dream about somebody particularly. I’ve a recurring sample whereby, each on occasion, I’ll dream of somebody, and will probably be so vivid; inside the dream, there’s a facet of me comforting that particular person. What I are inclined to do is I message that particular person and inform them, “I hope this isn’t bizarre, however I dreamt of you, and I don’t know what was occurring, however we shared a hug or a handshake or an embrace. Wherever you might be on the planet, I hope you’re okay.”
Some individuals are fully freaked out by that, and a few folks have been like, “Please don’t message me once more.” However some have been very receptive. Actually, I used to be simply in Milan, screening the movie, and noticed a pal of mine. The final time I’d dreamt of her, I used to be in Canada, in Squamish, which was the final place her household went on vacation earlier than her father died. There was a connection; even once I met her final week, and we have been reminding one another of that, it felt like there was such a frequency. And there at all times could be, if you happen to enable that frequency to consolation you by way of dialog and data. I want I might put extra of it in my movies. I’m just one first movie deep, so I’m in my infancy; I hope it’s a language that develops authentically in my work.
“My Father’s Shadow” revisits the Lagos of your childhood. What was vital to you in depicting this level in Nigerian historical past, capturing these particulars of the time and place because it had existed, and presenting that as you do on this movie by the eyes of youngsters?
For thus many people, this was our debut function: mine, my manufacturing designers (Jennifer and Pablo Anti,) two-thirds of our lead actors, our cinematographer (Jermaine Edwards,) and one in every of our composers, (Duval Timothy.) The manufacturing designers have a historical past of engaged on music movies.
There have been no locations to hire from in 1993, so we needed to work carefully with areas to seek out components of Lagos that have been considerably untouched. I received’t say derelict, as a result of I don’t essentially suppose it’s vital to castigate locations; they’re untouched, as a result of they’re situated away from the place the town is going on, the place the populace lives, the place business is bustling. They’re off the crushed observe. Seeing Lagos in that means was what I keep in mind. My expertise rising up in Lagos was in a single-parent family, happening facet quests with my mum. Generally we went off the crushed observe. I used to be compelled to attend in hospital rooms whereas she was on the physician’s, or within the automobile whereas she went to do one thing, or in a lounge when she was talking to her pals. I used to be left to entertain myself off the crushed observe, in old-school ’90s Lagos, which isn’t the sprawling, party-centric metropolis that folks consider it to be now.
On the lookout for that took intention, as a result of we couldn’t shoot in areas that not existed. Rising up in Lagos, we used to go to the seaside on Christmas Day, however now there are hardly any seashores in Lagos open to the general public. You must get a ship to an island the place you may go to the seaside, and even that could be a privilege for some and never everybody. We needed to actually go in search of Lagos.
I feel the youngsters loved it and felt secure. In the event that they have been in sprawling Lagos, it may need been rather more frenetic for them, and we would not have had as a lot time. There was numerous deliberately permitting them to be themselves, to play, to discover, and being very intentional with the place we have been going to place the digicam and the way they have been going to be with their appearing coaches. It was about this concept of play, discovering areas that have been dynamic and had the vary for us to shoot it from one route, then flip round and shoot it from one other, making it really feel fully completely different.
Due to my background as a self-taught filmmaker. I’m into being economical, in addition to intentional. I like to be as efficient as attainable, I feel. Nevertheless it wasn’t simple to depict Lagos; there’s such a bustling Central Enterprise District—the CBD—the place the whole lot is going on, and different components of the town are fully forgotten. These components of the town are relics of the olden occasions, and so they’re nice for filming a interval piece. All of Lagos is nice for filming, nevertheless it actually helped to lean into locations that folks would possibly really feel ashamed of of their metropolis. That was good, as a result of that’s the Lagos I truly keep in mind.
There’s a lot to debate concerning the sequences the place the brothers swim with their father on the seaside, and he opens up about his previous. Fọlárìn displays on the burdens and sacrifices of fatherhood and shares along with his son the story of his late brother, Oloremi, whom he continued to see in desires after his demise. At one level, he articulates this concept that resonates all through the entire movie: “The recollections that ache you when somebody goes are the identical ones that may consolation you later.” What are you able to inform me about approaching that scene and all that you just wanted it to specific?
I really like that you just referenced this scene, as a result of this was probably the most troublesome scene to movie, not for any motive that you may think it being, although it was overtly emotional. Capturing in Lagos might be very powerful, and the world we selected was a preferred vacation vacation spot. The crew felt they have been on vacation and have been having an excessive amount of enjoyable, I’d say, so I used to be attempting to remind them that we have been nonetheless working at this second. (laughs)
That individual sequence had so many issues occurring on the identical time. The boys weren’t notably good swimmers. We had deliberate to shoot that complete sequence within the water, so what we salvaged from the water is what you see within the movie, however that’s why we determined to lean into this concept of reminiscence. Was it within the water? Was it on land? How is reminiscence interpreted on either side? The performances we acquired from the boys within the water have been actually stiff, other than once they have been taking part in within the shallows; my producer was like, “Let’s simply shoot it on the seaside, so we have now it within the protection.” However on the seaside, we acquired extra earnest performances, as a result of we have been actually near the boys.
I used to be a bit frightened that we weren’t getting the performances we actually wanted, however I feel belief in a group of collaborators helped me see issues otherwise once I was not sure about what we have been doing. The seaside sequence is a confluence of luck, intention, and dedication on everybody’s half to get it accomplished. I actually don’t suppose, once we have been capturing there, that I assumed it was going to be probably the most profound scene. I used to be simply attempting to get by it as a result of it was a protracted day. Nevertheless it translated and feels extra intuitive; it’s in all probability probably the most intuitive scene, as a result of we had little or no time. We have been like, “Let’s simply go. This feels proper. Let’s shoot it.” If we had the time, that scene may need been constructed otherwise.
The digicam being near folks’s faces is intentional as a result of it helps you are feeling fully alive within the second, up towards the characters, and confronting them. We shot at a slight angle, so it wasn’t frontal, which I feel softened it a bit. I’ve to present Jermaine Edwards, my cinematographer, numerous reward. I’ve to present manufacturing design, our actors, and their coaches numerous reward. Every part simply got here collectively for these moments.
You shot on Tremendous 16, which provides this particular sort of texture and pacing to the picture. I can’t think about it was simple getting movie out and in of Lagos. Was that Jermaine’s cross to bear?
No, that was the producers’ cross to bear—a really huge cross to bear. A lot technique went into that, I’ve to say. I imply, I’m not aware of all the data, as a result of good producers attempt to restrict your involvement and permit you to focus extra creatively. However I do know it was a logistical feat to get the rushes out, not strike units, view the rushes, decide whether or not we acquired the whole lot we would have liked, strike these units two weeks later, and undergo the method repeatedly. It was actually difficult, and it’s a testomony to how dedicated the entire crew was in each facet of delivering this story.
“My Father’s Shadow” opens in U.S. theaters Feb. 13, by way of MUBI.