Directed By Akinola Davies

Starring – Sope Dirisu, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo, Godwin Egbo

The Plot – Two young brothers (Egbo and Egbo) explore Lagos for a whole day with their estranged father (Dirisu) during the 1993 Nigerian election crisis, witnessing both the city’s magnitude and their father’s daily struggles as political unrest threatens their journey home.

This film is currently not rated

MY FATHER’S SHADOW | Official Trailer | Only in Theaters February

POSITIVES

As a dynamic brotherly duo of first time feature length filmmakers, director Akinola Davies, and writer Wale Davies, go the semi-autobiographical route towards helming this very personal and tumultuously tense time during a politically shifting landscape to Nigeria, all framed from the unique perspective of two child brothers forced to make sense of the adult-emphasized world surrounding them, which vividly brings back all of the unforeseen vulnerabilities and naivety of such a fragile age of carelessness. Similar to Charlotte Wells’ 2022 sobering drama, Aftersun, which embodies a similar creative and visual gimmick, there’s a firm balance of innocence and curiosity that beckons the initial underlining of the way Akinola meticulously fleshes out this world, not only in the evidential poverty-stricken documentation of this country standing on the brink of financial collapse, but also in the zeroing in on the tenderly tested bond between father and sons that intuitively speaks volumes about the contained secrets between them, featuring these subliminal deposits of occasionally off-beat exposition that depend more on the firm investments of the audience focusing on the body language and facial responses of the characters, rather than spoon-fed sentiments that hammer home intention with a complete lack of subtlety that threatens the naturality of this story. This method of storytelling doesn’t always reward audiences with the most concrete of answers, but it does creatively conjure the wandering thought process of adolescents when they’re forced to grapple with the realities that condemn the invisible bubble of protection entrusted onto their parents to make right, leading to some crippling big reveals and surmounting obstacles within the story’s fabric that truly make you appreciative of the everyday freedoms and democracies that we utilize everyday, even with our currently bleak political landscape threatening such means. Rightfully, the political unease serves as more of the cannon fodder for the family narrative at the forefront of the storytelling, with only periodic intrusions of newspaper clippings or televised briefings to convey the bigger picture of what persists outside of this family’s perspective, while plenty of meditatively tranquil scenes and conversations between the trio uncover bouts with resentment, remorse, and perception-shattered reality in ways that force these kids to grow up a lot faster than they rightfully should have to, featuring one such cathartic scene at a beach that involves this father coming to terms with environmental elements that are out of his control as protector and provider. Visually, the film’s photography is commanded quite brilliantly by cinematographer, Jermaine Canute Edwards, who with the assistance of some absorbing editing practices washing over sequence transitions like a stream of summoned suppressed memories, as well as 16mm film inscribing a grittily grainy texture that gives off home movie vibes, combines claustrophobic framing with these sleekly surveilling camera motions, in order to teasingly tempt insight into the accessibility of conversations that, as the youth serving as the eyes and ears of the audience, aren’t always privy towards. Such unconventional visual aspects certainly go a long way towards conveying the civil unrest of what persists throughout this crucial election, with just enough tension bubbling underneath the surface to inscribe palpable drama to the engagement, but it also evokes these periodic intrusions into the storytelling with these spontaneously enacted ethereal images that lack enough proper context to measure if it’s a pretense or an afterthought to the 1993 framing, with the answer eventually revealed during the movie’s most gripping sequence, once the election results are made public. Having known so very little about this Nigerian election etched in history certainly helped keep me on the edge of my seat during the moments when politics are weaved carefully once more back into focus, but Edwards’ articulating these rampantly riveting atmospheric elements through child perspectives do so much more to breed the suspense of uncertainty in ways that that squash this preconceived notion of impenetrable child vulnerability, and considering these kids never quite grasp the extent of how important of a role that this election plays on their household and their surrounding country, it evokes a tragic element of helplessness that make them feel like victims of wrong place and wrong time circumstances, with each of the actors fully taking advantage of the impacts that their performances have on an investing audience. Like the Davies, I appreciated that the casting director sought out two real-life brothers and first time actors for the roles of Akin and Remi, as everything they lack in experience they more than make up for in combustible chemistry within their budding dynamic, with each of them attaining an impeccable naturality towards deliveries that never feels inauthentic or underwhelming, despite them holding the movie’s responsive conscience in the palms of their small hands. They are joined by Sope Dirisu, who also breathes a tenderly thoughtful and stoically strong presence to the air of his performance as this struggling father attempting to keep his composure throughout unforeseen adversity that obviously drain him. Dirisu’s Folarin isn’t necessarily a morally sound character, as some uncovered aspects come to compromise the air of honor that he projects to his offspring, but he’s certainly a character who firmly understands the irreplaceable value of fatherhood to kids, and in taking this emotionally exhausted character down some bitter truths about his own past, results in a tremendously layered performance deserving of as many eyes in the audience as possible, allowing this movie to make the most with such a minimized cast doing the driving.

NEGATIVES

While the idea of ingraining intuitive expositional answers into more of the responses of the characters, rather than the dialogue, is one that I wholeheartedly subscribe towards in any movie, it’s not necessarily one that works as effective towards the movie’s abrupt time jump of an ending, where one major reveal leaves more surmising questions than alleviating answers, even in the fog of some periodic evidence veering into the movie’s imagery. Without spoiling anything, I can say that the movie’s ending will have you reaching for tears if you successfully invested in these characters throughout, but even with that blessing in my favor, the execution of this vitally tender scene came across as too rushed to land as unanimously as expected, feeling like a couple of scenes were missing in between this big reveal, which could’ve done a greater job of subtly steering us into its unavoidability, rather than nosediving during the movie’s final five minutes. Considering the rest of the film patiently takes its time letting so many of its familial subplots materialize before coming to boiling points, this was the lone instance where the Davies direction and writing felt a bit flawed in the ways it was delivered and unwrapped for interpretive audiences, especially coming on the tail end of its riveting climax, which is resolved a bit too neatly tidied to feel honestly gauging of the situational adversity that plagued these Nigerian people. Beyond some resentment with the ending, My Father’s Shadow is also a movie that took a bit longer than expected to fully invest in this narrative, particularly as a means of the opening act not only not taking time to effectively flesh out these characters before throwing us into the deep water of the plot, but also because so many of the initialized interactions between father and sons is met with this unavoidable disconnect between them that speaks volumes of Folarin’s physical distance from his household. It’s undeniably a truthfully authentic aspect of a reeling relationship, especially the boys timid curiosity to focus intently on him, as a means of attaining some semblance of insight into his life, but it doesn’t always lend itself to the most engrossing of engagements that wholeheartedly captures your attention from the opening scene, instead leaving around twenty minutes of the storytelling until it finally finds its footing in simultaneously fleshing out the unease of Nigeria with that of the domestic disturbances of a family on the mend.

OVERALL
My Father’s Shadow is a poetically profound and quietly devastating meditation on the importance of fatherhood in unsustainable situations, and one that the Davies personally weaponize to evoke sprawling observations about authoritarian governments that urge us to learn from the past before we’re doomed to repeat it. Featuring a trio of tenderly affectionate performances, as well as stunning cinematography that sensorially renders the raw memorability and textural consistencies of home movies, the film never loses sight of the story that it’s attempting to tell, piecing together enough beauty and pain in the confines of Lagos, Nigeria, that take its distinct conflicts and make them feel universal.

My Grade: 7.9 or B