Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father’s Shadow, the first-ever Nigerian film to be recognized among the Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection, plays like a remembered daydream stretched across a political fault line. Set during Nigeria’s fraught 1993 presidential election crisis, the film filters national upheaval through the perspective of two young brothers who’ve been granted a rare day with their mostly absent father. The result is both a coming-of-age story and an act of cinematic reclamation: personal memory reframed as national history.
Catch My Father’s Shadow in theaters beginning February 13th at the Laemmle Royal.