My Father’s Shadow Review subtiel and Intelligent Coming-of-Age Story In 1993 Nigeria | Cannes Film Festival

ONCE UPON A TIME in Lagos Might Be An Alternative Title For This Fervent and Vividly Intense Child’s-Eye-View Movie from First-time Film-Maker Akinola Davies Jr. It’s a transparently personal project and a coming-of-aged film in ITS (traumated) way, a moving account of how, just for one day, two young boys glimpse the real life and real history of their father who has been mostly. His defects and his weaknesses come to see.

It is 1993 in NigeriaA tense time with the country on the edge of the disorder because of the imminent presidential elections, the first since a military takeover 10 years earlier. In a remote village far from Lagos, two young boys (played by clear Spark newcomers Godwin Chimerie Egbo and Chibiuke Marvelous Egbo) are impressed by the sudden return of their father, fola, played by Sope Dirisu, who makes no explanation or apology for so long in Lagos, or the appearance now. He is a handsome, charismatic, commander man to whom they make the immediate obedient reactions “yes, dad” and “no, dad”.

Their father demands what happened to his watch and have the boys touched his possessions in the parental bedroom? (We have to catch a glimpse that watches the film in the last moments.) And then he announces that he should return to Lagos immediately, without waiting for their mother to return from shopping – and in a mysterious grill, says that the boys accompany him on this occasion.

What happens next is both an increasingly important search and binding experience for father and sons while struggling to come to the crawling capital in a bus without gasoline, and then by hitchhiking a bumpy ride on a truck. Fola is on a desperate mission to reclaim four months of unpaid wages before he clearly expected a complete breakdown of the law and the order associated with these elections will be.

The boys look with bewildered silence while their father greeted men they have never seen before and who are fola “kapo” or “boss” nickname and they are ordered to greet a quasi-cream with a lot of politeness but the exact person who can get fola is never his money. Fola is under pressure, modest, suffers inexplicable nose bleeds. Yet this frustrating delay gives the three of them a kind of breathing space to get to know each other. Fola points to the handsome national theater building of the city where he says that their mother spent all her time and money as a young woman. She was Theater-Mad, they are discovering now. The children had no idea. How could they?

Fola also points to Polopony’s on the street, belonging to the rich classes of Nigeria. He takes them to a bar where he reigns them with magical memories of falling in love with their mother – but also exchanges an important looks with a waitress. He takes them to the beach where he speaks about the importance of providing your family: that is what a man does, and it is what he has to do himself, with these unpaid wages, at the moment. And all the time the boys are hit by the thousands of people and the thousands of faces that Davies shoots in threatening close -up – especially the uncertain, intimidating faces of the soldiers.

What his older son says to Fola is that his mother explained that Fola was absent with them because he had to earn money – because he actually loved them. And God himself was nowhere to see and God loved them. So is absence the same as love? It is an artless, heartbreakingly unanswered question that is dominating the tone of this fascinating film. Is absence love? Shall we all feel the love for someone most intense when they are overtaken by the ultimate absence of death? It is a rich, sincere and rewarding film.