My Father’s Shadow is not simply a touching film about two boys spending a precious day with their father. It is a cinematic gesture of remembrance, a refusal to let the unspoken past dissolve in silence.
1. Art as a personal sacrifice
Davies states it plainly:
Film takes time… Rachel barely sees her children, and I barely see my family.
This is more than an admission; it reveals the emotional stakes of the film.
My Father’s Shadow is not a casual artistic venture—it is an offering, a duty toward their younger selves, their families, and Nigeria.
🟢Competition "My Father’s Shadow" : Director Akinola Davies Jr, and producer Rachel Dargavel. #Marrakechfestival
🟢 المسابقة الرسمية "ظلُّ والدي" : المخرج أكينولا ديفيز جونيور والمنتجة راشيل داركافيل. #مهرجان_مراكش
©️Omar_Hamdane pic.twitter.com/dUqew4D6PB
— Marrakech Film Festival (@Marrakech_Fest) December 4, 2025
2. A family story that becomes a national narrative
The project began with a short script written by the director’s brother more than a decade ago.
A simple text, yes, but one that struck Davies with unusual emotional force.
The film captures a single day between two boys and their father—a fleeting moment that echoes a lifetime of longing.
For a filmmaker who lost his father very young, confining the story to one day is a way to compress an entire unlived relationship.
The father becomes a presence defined not by what he does, but by everything he represents: memory, loss, possibility.
3. 1993: the political story that was never filmed
Setting the film in 1993 roots the personal narrative within a politically turbulent moment in Nigerian history.
That year should have marked the democratic transition, yet the country was thrust back into authoritarian uncertainty.
The political figure beloved by the people—depicted as a symbolic paternal presence—was prevented from leading the nation.
Two shadows overlap:
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the absent father in the family,
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the absent leader who could have reshaped Nigeria.
The film becomes a subtle political elegy.
4. Lagos as it truly breathes
Davies insists:
“The Lagos we grew up in… we never saw it on screen.”
This is crucial.
He does not film Lagos as an abstraction but as a living organism—its faces, its sounds, its dignity.
Seeing the city through the eyes of children reinstates a sense of wonder:
a reminder that the ordinary carries its own magic.
5. A generational bridge
When the film was shown in Nigeria:
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Older audiences saw their untold history finally granted visibility.
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Younger audiences discovered fragments of a national past never taught in school.
The film becomes a mediator between generations—something institutions failed to achieve.
6. Family as a space of truth-telling
One of Davies’s last reflections lingers:
“Things are said in the film within the family context… that are rarely said in real life.”
This is the film’s emotional core:
A cinematic space where the unsaid becomes sayable, where grief finds shelter, where memory can breathe.
