When Akinola Davies Jr. stepped up to accept the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut at the Royal Festival Hall in February 2026, he had about forty-five seconds to speak. He thanked his family, his brother and co-writer Wale, and then, with cameras rolling, used the moment to name places the BBC would later cut from the broadcast.
“To the economic migrant, the conflict migrant, those under occupation, dictatorship, persecution and those experiencing genocide, you matter, and your stories matter more than ever,” he said. “Your dreams are an act of resistance. To those watching at home, archive your loved ones, archive your stories yesterday, today and forever. For Nigeria, for London, for Congo, for Sudan, for free Palestine. Thank you.”
Two hours later, when the ceremony aired on BBC One and iPlayer, that part was gone. The network cited time constraints, compressing three hours into two, but viewers noticed what remained. When someone in the audience with Tourette’s shouted a racial slur during a presentation, that made the broadcast. Davies naming Palestine did not. The moment lit up social media, turning his speech into a larger statement about whose voices are platformed and whose are silenced.
That moment captures the kind of filmmaker Davies is: someone who takes the global stage to highlight stories the industry often forgets. Someone who understands that making art about memory and archive means nothing if you’re not paying attention to who’s disappearing in real time.
With My Father’s Shadow, he’s done something no Nigerian director has done before. The film premiered at Cannes in May 2025, picked up a Caméra d’Or Special Mention, and became the first Nigerian title ever selected for the Official Selection. Set during the 1993 presidential election in Lagos, it follows two young brothers spending a single day with their estranged father, played by SọịpẼ́ Dìrísú, in a performance critics have called shattering. MUBI acquired it for North America and the UK, and The Guardian named it a standout.
Davies approaches filmmaking differently from the typical Nollywood playbook, where plot often drives the story. My Father’s Shadow prioritizes feeling over exposition. “I think we were really fortunate enough to have written a beautiful script that, when read, evoked a lot of feeling,” he said. “I know for me the first time I read it, I definitely cried in the short form of it.” That emotional response became their compass. Every decision came back to honoring what the story put in their bodies rather than just advancing a mechanical plot.
“In the Nigerian and African context, plot is great, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of what filmmaking is,” Davies tells The Nollywood Reporter. “Actually just being able to be more self-reflective and honor what’s going through in our bodies and our lived bodies, I think is more significantly important, especially as a people who haven’t really had an opportunity to hold space for each other and hold space for our experiences.”
The film is told largely from the children’s perspective, reflecting Davies’ own experiences after losing his father at a young age. The day the boys spend with their dad in the film is a day they never actually had in real life. The boys’ viewpoint emphasizes small details: how light hits a tree, the sound of birds, the unnoticed presence of disabled people in the market.
“It allows you to focus on the minutiae of the world, all things that children come with a certain neutrality to,” he said. “And equally, if we lean too much into the politics, it becomes a completely different film. We wanted to stay close to this idea of grief and loss.”
The political backdrop, the June 12, 1993, annulled presidential election that Moshood Abiola was poised to win before the military annulled the results, is ever-present yet unobtrusive. Children feel tension in adults’ voices, notice strange behavior, but do not receive briefings.
“So much of African history is really underserved and undertold,” Davies said. “I think our political history is equally underserved and undertold. For Nigeria, this is a pivotal period for what it has become and what it could have been. Whatever you think of Abiola for right or wrong, his family paid a huge price. The next generation needs to know, because history wasn’t taught in schools. As Nigerians, we don’t really engage with our political history as much as we can. We need to create more space to be able to have dialogue about our lived experiences.”
One of the most striking things about My Father’s Shadow is how much it leaves unsaid. Characters communicate through inference rather than declaration. Davies said this was intentional and rooted in how Nigerian culture actually works.
“I’ve been thinking about human existence,” he said. “A lot of information is inferred as opposed to shown. That’s how we communicate. That’s the way we wanted to communicate. In the context of children, you’re not really allowed to ask questions. You have to be a lot more observant. By being observant, by being a witness, it gives a more powerful way to view the themes of what’s going on because you realize you’re caught up in something before you even know it.”
He brought up James Baldwin during the civil rights movement, trying to find his place and realizing that being a witness was just as important as participating. “The participation is not always something you feel able to reference, but actually the fact that you witness it, it archives it and shows that it happened.”
That idea of bearing witness runs through every frame. The boys aren’t driving the action. They’re watching it, remembering it, and being changed by it without fully understanding it. And because the camera stays locked to their perspective, the audience witnesses alongside them.
The father figure is present but unreachable. He’s there physically but emotionally somewhere else entirely. Davies said this wasn’t a creative choice so much as an honest reflection of Nigerian family dynamics.
“If you’re Nigerian or African or from the global south, I think a lot of times families are fractured in this idea of trying to look for something better,” he said. “Kids get sent abroad or sent to school. Fathers go to work in different cities. The generation above us didn’t have the privilege of talking about their experiences. It’s the reality. Not something we created. It’s just what the human experience is like.”
On working with SọịpẼ́ Dìrísú, who carries the film with a performance that barely raises its voice, Davies said Dìrísú came into the role anxious about being of Nigerian descent but not feeling he could claim it. That anxiety became the performance.
“He was able to be quiet. He was able to be a lot more reflective. He didn’t have to have all the answers. That humanizes who he is and who this character is. Honestly, with someone as talented as SọịpẼ́, I didn’t ask anything of him. I just asked him to show up and give me his version of who the character is. I learned more from him than any other person.”
The child actors, Godwin and Marvelous, already had the familial shorthand to convey subtle emotion naturally. “We just had to labour on what each character’s feeling is for each scene in terms of what their wants and needs are,” he said. “But for the boys, they already had a shorthand with knowing what was up because they have a similar relationship with their fathers.”
The film refuses closure in ways that might frustrate audiences raised on three-act structures and happy endings. “Closure is such a fantasy that doesn’t really exist in real life,” Davies said. “In grief, when you lose a parent or loved one, you don’t have that closure. It’s important to make us conscious of that, so in our interactions, we’re a lot more present and a lot more genuine about how we feel in a certain moment.”
“Audiences are super intelligent. They need to be encouraged to use their mind and engage in dialogue,” Davies said. “To tie things up in a bow feels like a bit of a shame because you lose this idea of conversation in your film. If you say what it is and close it, that’s the end of the conversation. People never need to come back to the well and drink again.”
He connected this to call-and-response, a fundamental part of Nigerian culture where participation is expected, not optional. “I believe in rallying people and getting them to be active participants in the films they watch as opposed to being passive. We’re so used to all the outcomes being guaranteed, so much so that you watch a film, and you can already predict what’s happening. But in this film, you’re guessing at all times. The outcome isn’t always pleasing to everyone, but it gives audiences authority over their own voice and the way they see films.”
This philosophy connects My Father’s Shadow to a larger conversation about Nigerian cinema. His work, alongside films like C.J. Obasi’s Mami Wata, shows that poetic, reflective cinema can succeed internationally yet still struggle for attention at home. My Father’s Shadow premiered in Nigerian cinemas on September 19, 2025, through FilmOne, drawing audiences in Lagos and Abuja and sparking dialogue across generations about a history rarely taught in schools.
When asked what best represents him as a filmmaker, Davies paused for a long time.
“I don’t really know the answer,” he finally said. “Sometimes I feel like maybe I’m a filmmaker who’s very obsessed with the mundane. The simple things in life. The flows. The things people take for granted.”
Then he started talking about his collaborators. “I’m very proud of everyone I worked with. I’m proud that they all feel like they have a say in the film. How can I continue to collaborate with these people, how can we continue to develop a language, how can we continue to challenge each other and push the form of what we’re trying to do? I don’t have to do this all by myself. I have a creative family around me, and I’m just really thankful that I can make room for them.”
For his cast. For his crew. For the stories that don’t fit the formula. For the places the BBC edits out. For Nigeria, for London, for Congo, for Sudan, for Palestine. For all of it.
That’s who Akinola Davies Jr. is, a filmmaker who creates space. And then trusts you to walk into it and find your own way.