Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo and Godwin Egbo in My Father's Shadow Photo: Mubi
(12A, 93 mins, in cinemas today)
Two brothers, eight-year-old Akin (Godwin Egbo) and 11-year-old Remi (Chibuike Marvellous Egbo), play and bicker outside their home by a dusty road in rural Nigeria. An eerie gust of wind blows through the house, and seems to bring with it their father (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù). He is suddenly there – like a ghostly apparition, only flesh and blood – and readying to leave again in a hurry. When the boys complain about the brevity of his visit, their father makes the spontaneous decision to take his sons into Lagos for the day, to accompany him as he goes about his business.
This is the set-up for My Father’s Shadow, the feature debut of British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr and his brother and co-writer, Wale Davies, which feels less like another Friday film release and more like a precious gift, direct from the Davies brothers to you, to be clasped close to your chest and treasured forever.
The Lagos they present us with is a whirl of lively debate, speeding traffic (apparently unchecked by fuel shortages) and fleeting eye contact with friendly strangers, all set to a reflective, mournful piano score by Duval Timothy and CJ Mirra. It’s the day of the 1993 Nigerian presidential election – the country’s first since the military coup a decade earlier – and even the boys' careworn father carries with him a sense of hope for a new Nigeria. He takes it into the workplace, where he tries to collect six months of unpaid wages, and on to the live music bar (Guinness for the uncles, Fanta for the kids) where he exchanges intense looks with a waitress.
‘Everything is sacrifice,’ the father tells Remi. ‘You just have to pray you don’t sacrifice the wrong thing.’
Akinola Davies Jr has an eye for a stylish image, honed by his time creating visuals for the musician Blood Orange and high-end brands such as Gucci and Louis Vuitton. It shows particularly in one sublimely beautiful wide shot at Tarkwa Bay beach, which recalls the final moments of both Shola Amoo’s The Last Tree (2019) and Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight (2016).
This is filmmaking of such radiant confidence, it seems to embody the words of the great Senegalese filmmaker and father of African cinema, Ousmane Sembène, when asked whether his films were understood in Europe. “Let’s be very clear,” said Sembène as he leaned forward, one elbow propped on his knee, “Europe is not my centre … Why be a sunflower and turn towards the sun? I myself am the sun.”
My Father’s Shadow is lit by a different sun from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol or Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, though these stories share a sense of gratitude to the otherworldly visitor who interrupts our daily life with a reminder of what’s really important: that you love and are loved. Wale Davies has said he was instead inspired by the Yoruba concept of the akudaya, a returning spirit who may mingle unnoticed among the living.
A scene from My Father's Shadow Photo: Mubi
In any case, My Father’s Shadow has a magic which belongs not to any specific spiritual tradition, but to combining the dual perspectives of parent and child. This is a film about adult experiences seen through a child’s eyes, and about childhood experiences seen through adult eyes. It is a film which understands both the longing of the child for the absent parent and the longing of the working parent for the child, whose sweetest moments may be missed in order to provide for their material needs. “Everything is sacrifice,” the father tells Remi. “You just have to pray you don’t sacrifice the wrong thing.”
And what if you do? There is consolation here too. Like the father’s old friend who regrets he did not tell his wife enough how much he appreciated her, when he had the chance. You may not recognise the song this man sings, but you will know the feeling. It’s the same feeling Elvis sang about in You Were Always on My Mind – the Pet Shop Boys’ version of which was used to great effect in Andrew Haigh’s 2023 film about bereavement, All of Us Strangers.
“I am certain she knows,” the boys’ father tells his friend. Because maybe it is possible to remember a lost one with such heartfelt accuracy that your loving remembrance conjures them back into existence for a moment or two? Almost … almost.
This is the kind of film that will have people reaching for their phone as they leave the cinema, and, if their father is still alive, they will call him and tell him that they love him; though not in so many words, probably. And if their father is no longer alive, they will do the same – except without the need for a phone.
Ellen E Jones is the Nerve’s film critic. A writer and broadcaster, her book Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World (Faber) won the Kraszna-Krausz Prize. She co-hosts the BBC’s flagship film and TV programme, Screenshot, with Mark Kermode on BBC Radio 4, and won the Broadcasting Press Guild’s Presenter of The Year, 2025. Her work has appeared in Empire, Elle, Esquire, The Guardian, The Independent and more.