“Dear father, I will see you in dreams.”
The opening words of My Father’s Shadow, spoken by one of its young protagonists, feel almost innocuous at its outset. The film has been touted as an Africa-set complement to a bittersweet coming-of-age drama like Aftersun, and on one level, that’s true. It follows a day in the life of two young brothers as they’re whisked from their home in the Nigerian backcountry and into the bustling city of Lagos, where they reconnect with their father Fọlárìn (an immaculate Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù). But it doesn’t take long for My Father’s Shadow to evolve into something almost metaphysical. To some, it’s a ghost story; to others, an Afrofuturist fable. But for director Akinola Davies Jr. and his brother and co-writer Wale Davies, it’s a way of communing with the father they never got to know.
