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Cannes One To Watch: How ‘My Father’s Shadow’ Filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr. Crafted A Nigerian Family Story In Buzzed-About Debut
Ones To Watch: Filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr. teams with his brother to tell a Nigerian family story in Un Certain Regard entry 'My Father's Story.'
Shot in Lagos, Nigeria, it stars stage and screen actor Sopé Dìrísù as a dad who takes his two young sons into the bustling metropolis as unrest erupts over the country’s controversial June 12th, 1993 presidential election. The film, Wale notes, “was mirroring this idea of fatherhood and what it means in a Black or African or specifically Nigerian context where you feel you have to go out and earn and you have to go out and make a livelihood, but what do you trade off with that time spent intentionality? And then there’s a sort of Nigerian-Greek vibe where the father has to go into protective instinct to get his sons home and in so doing “assuming this position of power and masculinity,” Davies says, while at the same time the relationship between the three is “very meditative and very gentle and tender.”
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