'My Father's Shadow' and absenteeism.

An absentee father and an absentee government occupy almost the same space in a child’s mind; the only difference is that one is easier to blame. For the two sons in My Father’s Shadow, the directorial debut of starlet Akinola Davies Jr, both worlds are collapsing as one, and that’s a scary thought. The complexity of politics has been simplified by militant power. The simplicity of their father’s absenteeism has been complicated by an affair, ice cream and the remarkable stories he tells. These two boys are now forced into a position where they must reckon with the impossibility of an ever-corrupt world, a position that every single person in Nigeria had to come to terms with in 1993.

This day wasn’t supposed to be that, though. This day was supposed to be the day when the two boys (played by real-life brothers Godwin Chimerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo) finally got to spend some time with their father, Fola (Sope Dirisu), whom they rarely see because he’s too busy working away from their small village. Their relationship is one of order. Very respectful, very orthodox. He’s a man unafraid to punish his children if necessary. They are two boys who realise this and are (mostly) on their best behaviour, despite viewing him in a way often more befitting an uncle than a father. On a whim, they decide to go into hustling, bustling Lagos, the trio desperate to spend more time together, and Fola desperate to get the six months’ wages his employer owes him.

So begins this special ‘day-in-the-life’ tour of Lagos, personally plastered by Akinola and his brother, Wale Davies, who collectively wrote the movie. Their father takes them on a bus to the centre, where they walk around, staring in wide-eyed wonder and often overwhelmed horror at the scope and size of what they’re not used to. One of the many triumphs here is that Akinola does not exploit the children for emotional leverage; they are not mere tools for the narrative, but real kids, something likely helped along by drawing on his and his brothers’ own experiences. There are many subtle, quiet moments in which the children look at each other, lost, as if using one another as an anchor, while their father takes them further out to sea. At other times, they bicker, and their father’s loving but firm hand intervenes. As the title suggests, this is a movie about watching two kids hide beneath their father’s shadow on the precipice of revolution, and that they feel like real kids is all the better.

This shadow recedes as the film progresses, until it becomes crystallised in dream sequences that Akinola frequently cuts back to. Shots of the waves, shots holding on the trees but slowly zooming, strange, surreal shots of Fola’s nose bleeding under a green light; all in stark contrast to the immediate realism of the military takeover. The camera never breaks, but it often bends to see the harsh truths of objects that exist without question, and, like the children struggling around Lagos, finds things that interest it, absent the narrative, and sticks with them. It’s a confidently shot piece of work that abstracts at will but keeps a firm hand on the narrative, decidedly not the showing of a debutant, you’d think.

Though the ending is stark, it remains hopeful for a brighter tomorrow. At last, the children are moving towards the camera, not away from it, even if it’s melancholic. Such a statement piece deserves to be rewarded, and it has been; it’s hard to think of a better movie to kick-start Nigeria’s long-overdue position as a Cannes leading player. See it when you can.