Nigeria is one of the most prominent West African countries, with its largest city, Lagos, classified as a “megacity” of over 20 million inhabitants – larger than London or New York. Yet oddly, its wealth and industry haven’t allowed many inroads into the international cinema market, with its homegrown industry, “Nollywood”, taking precedence. One of the first prominent Nigerian-made features to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow [+lire aussi :
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fiche film] is an auspicious step into cinematic waters for the country, memorialising its crucial 1993 presidential election – which held hope of democratic change, at last – and poetically limning Lagos and its outskirts. Yesterday saw its premiere in Un Certain Regard.

A less confident and more generic film than My Father’s Shadow would intertwine the personal and the political; Davies Jr’s screenplay (composed with a large helping hand from his brother Wale) really sees these approaches in parallel, or only brushing shoulders when needed. It’s a one-day odyssey: pre-teen brothers Olaremi (Chibuike Marvelous Egbo) and Akinola (Godwin Egbo) are preparing to enjoy a rare day out with their father, Fola (short for Folarin and played by acclaimed British actor Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù), accompanying him for his work demands into the awesomely sprawling city, with relaxation and exploration time also scheduled. This plan intentionally coincides with the announcement of the 1993 election results, with optimism, as well as many fears of corruption and tampering, looming with it.

A dynamically cut found-footage montage makes up the film’s opening minutes, getting us somewhat up to speed with the complex political background. And considering festival films generally, and festival-friendly work from the region, there’s a pleasing muscularity and scope to how Davies Jr (who has a prestigious UK creative industry background) devises the space and depicts the action. Amidst a rapidly modernising city, he finds locales and back alleys where 1993 seemingly never ended; opts for a more desaturated colour palette than photographers and DoPs from home and abroad would probably land on; and eschews its vibrant musical heritage of new and old Afrobeat, using a score from Duval Timothy and CJ Mirra akin to Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s rousing “post-rock”.

One flaw is that the film’s concision, and even subtlety, is sometimes a limitation. The reality of Fola’s life is deeply connected to his aspirations for election night, being a supporter of the Social Democrat Party candidate MKO Abiola, whose new economic policies he hopes will relieve his habitual unemployment (of course, this situation is not through lack of trying, as we see in a vibrant episode at an office that typically provides him with skilled manual labour work). We gradually surmise that he was present some nights previous at a massacre at the nearby Bonny Camp military base – which, this reviewer having done some research, seems like an invented event. After a beautiful late-film interlude where he watches the dispiriting results with his comrades in an atmospheric and swish bar (thankfully, the two boys feel quite welcome there), the city collapses into civil unrest, and we further clock the memory-piece element of the movie.

As said, My Father’s Shadow is an accomplished film, exhibiting the fact that the Davies brothers (of whom the two sons are an autobiographical mirror) absolutely have the goods, yet it can’t always determine the appropriate balance of personal and political, although it knows these things aren’t interchangeable.

My Father’s Shadow is a production by the UK, Ireland and Nigeria, staged by Element Pictures in association with Crybaby and Fatherland Productions. Its international sales are handled by The Match Factory.