“We wanted to conjure a picture of the Nigeria we know and love” - Akinola Davies Jr., Rachel Dargavel, and Funmbi Ogunbanwo on Making “My Father’s Shadow”
- Jerry Chiemeke
- 6 hours ago
- 17 min read
Exclusive interview: Akinola Davies Jr., Rachel Dargavel & Funmbi Ogunbanwo discuss making My Father's Shadow, Nigeria's first Cannes competition film.
Some films announce themselves quietly, arriving without fanfare before lodging themselves somewhere deep and permanent. My Father's Shadow, the debut feature from Nigerian-British filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr., is exactly that kind of film.
Premiering in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2025 Festival de Cannes where it received the Caméra d'Or Special Mention for Best First Feature, the film subsequently screened at the Centrepiece Section of the Toronto International Film Festival before having its global theatrical premiere in Nigeria in September 2025. It has since arrived on MUBI, bringing its unique interpretation of Lagos to the world — and the world, it turns out, has been waiting for it.
My Father’s Shadow is a semi-autobiographical work, co-written by Akinola with his brother Wale Davies. Set over the course of a single day in Lagos during the 1993 Nigerian election crisis, it follows a father, estranged from his two young sons, as they travel through the city while political unrest threatens to swallow everything around them. What audiences are presented with is a richly-layered film that accomplishes multiple feats: an intimate tale of fatherhood, brotherhood, and a nation teetering on the brink; a juxtaposition of the social contract that binds a family and that which binds a country; and a sometimes blissful, sometimes devastating journey through memory, bonds, and loss.
At its heart, the film is a love letter: to Lagos, to fathers both present and absent, and to the irretrievable days that quietly shape who we become.
Behind the camera, Davies Jr was joined by two producers whose investment in the project went well beyond the professional. Rachel Dargavel, the London-based producer who had previously collaborated with him on his Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning short Lizard, championed the film through years of development, convinced from the earliest drafts that its combination of personal grief and political sweep was something rare.
“I’m interested in stories that have the capacity to resonate both locally and globally, films that are able to retain authenticity and speak specifically to an audience whilst also tapping into themes that can resonate universally”, says Dargavel, reflecting on the motivating factor behind her emotional investment in the screenplay.
Alongside her, Lagos-born Funmbi Ogunbanwo, co-founder and CEO of Nigerian film collective Fatherland Productions, brought an insider's intimacy to the material: a deep, instinctive recognition of the streets, the names, and the people on the page.
Between the three of them, they built something that feels both fiercely specific and profoundly open.
We sat down with Davies Jr., Dargavel, and Ogunbanwo to talk about how it all came to be.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
With My Father's Shadow being your debut feature and such a personal story, how did you navigate that tension between intention and intuition?
Akinola Davies Jr: I think any aspects of navigating tension and intuition in the film were managed through a big collaborative process. We tried to nurture the themes of the story we were telling and make it as literal and poetic as we could on the (screenplay) pages. We tried to answer all the questions for our characters in terms of their needs and desires and goals, while equally weaving the ideas of mythology, memory, grief and manifestation together.
When making a film, you have to be able to answer all the questions thrown your way, and a lot depends on leaning further into the process of what you're trying to say and how you can say it, while trusting said process.
The film is as much about the construction of memory as it is about the events themselves. You and Wale lost your father young, so you're building a relationship with someone through fragments. How did you translate that experience of reconstructed memory into cinematic language?
Akinola Davies Jr: This involved a lot of sitting with (cinematographer) Jermaine (Edwards). We went through every character's feeling in each scene and we planned our shots accordingly. I think we could have leaned into more aesthetic stylistic choices, but I think we really wanted to capture and register as much fervour as possible. For this film, the cameras functioned as a keyhole into emotion, as well as a method of extracting what our characters were meant to express in every given moment.
In terms of piecing the story together, we had met people in Lagos who furnished us with a myriad of stories about our father, and there were also these side quests we undertook with our mother. In addition to that, we had a repository of experiences from our time in Nigeria. Our film is a collage of those experiences and meetings, in addition to the people and things we find familiar. We remember what it was like to be in the country at that point in time. We also remember what the people, the language, the spirit and personas of Nigerian people are, so we just tried to put all of that on screen.
Rachel, what was it specifically that convinced you this semi-autobiographical story could resonate universally, especially given its deeply personal Nigerian context and non-linear narrative structure?
Rachel Dargavel: At its most simple, the film is a father-and-son story, a touching portrayal of two boys getting to know their dad, and a picture of grief which has the capacity to resonate wherever you are from, and we always held that close. When Akinola and Wale discussed their debut feature idea with me, I was convinced that having them be in total command of the story and the depth of the emotion would result in a beautiful film. To bring a Nigerian story to life is exciting - how do we really ever get to learn about each other if we don’t get to witness lives beyond our own?
My Father’s Shadow lends itself to a non-linear narrative: it's not a real day, it's a fragment of memory, it's an exploration of a dream so it made sense, but we had to work hard to create something that wasn’t confusing. Not all films can carry this non-linear approach, but the very nature of how this film was realised naturally leaned into this story. It was also something we used to create tension and red herrings. A lot of the non-linear techniques were found during the editing process by asking ourselves certain questions like: how can we make this day feel like it might just fall apart? How do we blur the line between dream and memory? How do we keep the audience asking questions about what it is they are seeing?
By way of narrative construction and storytelling, what were some of the layers you added during development of this film that weren't in the original draft?
Rachel Dargavel: The story was not originally set against the political backdrop, we knew early on that we needed to bring a ticking clock element to the narrative. Akinola wanted to incorporate the feeling of a creeping dread, which was something we first played with in Lizard, and we knew we wanted to have this in My Father’s Shadow so that we could take the simple father-and-son narrative and elevate it. We wanted to create a feeling of time running out, and that day in history reflected the idea across a macro-to-micro portrait. Time was running out for the country, and in similar fashion, time was running out for the boys and their father.
We also spent a long time working through the mother figure, focusing on how and when she could be utilised. We equally dwelt on inserting moments that were uncanny such as the use of the birds, the repeat scene on the bench, little hints that the day was not all that it seemed. The Bonny Camp flashbacks came in the edit, as did the film rollout effect. The edit played a huge role in realising the slippages in time we wanted to play with. People often overlook the third part of the film, the edit, where you have to make the whole thing again and somehow connect it back to the original script.
Back to you, Akinola. Was there a conscious decision to avoid melodrama or sentimentality? How do you calibrate emotional restraint in telling a story so close to your own experience?
Akinola Davies Jr: I think what melodrama does is that it forcibly guides people down a certain path. We prefer the idea of what emotions truly are in their stark reality: there’s room for ambiguity, things are not necessarily finite, and there are concepts that are left undefined. We enjoy that as a structure and form of the way we want to tell stories. In a sense, we had all the answers to the questions, but we needed it to feel like real life. We wanted to conjure a picture of the Nigeria we know and love, and we wanted audiences to connect with that. I like to think that if you're flagposting all those emotions and what the audience is supposed to feel in relation to them, it leaves little to no space for authenticity, so we were very intentional.
Maybe there’s a sense of constraint (in the film), but this reflects the emotions conveyed in the pages of the screenplay. Everybody was really sensitive to what we were trying to create, and they understood that the material is extremely sensitive by default. So we weren't asking people to perform the material, we were asking them to be the material, and I think there's a big difference between both of those things. To answer the question of whether we were deliberate about (avoiding) sentimentality, we are not trying to forcefully lead you down a path to what you're supposed to feel. We want you to feel in the capacity you choose to, because that enables you to ask more questions within your own life, as opposed to restricting yourself to what is locked on the screen. For us, it's an opportunity to be generous as filmmakers and allow the audience to project themselves into the material. I think it allows them to take a certain ownership of the film.
My Father’s Shadow treats the city of Lagos as a character in itself. But you're also making this film for international audiences who may not know Lagos intimately. How did you balance specificity and accessibility? Was there any point you got “scared” of exoticising or over-explaining the nuances and soul of Lagos?
Akinola Davies Jr: No, there was never a point when I felt any of that.
I think people have this broad idea of what Lagos is like: a fast-paced city with fun, action, danger and all that. But I grew up there. I go back there quite regularly. And, you know, while it is all those things, I think we can't get too fixated on stereotypes of what it means to be Nigerian and Lagosian. I mean, people come for the parties and they come for Christmas, but there’s a lot more to Lagos than what you may get to see as a visitor for a month or three weeks. There's still 11 more months of the year where the people in that city have to exist, move and feel. Children go to school, people trade, they get married, they go to the hospital, they die. People are on the brink, and they're trying to survive. Lagos is one of the most cinematic cities in the world, considering how much I've had the privilege of travelling. I think that it's important for the people of Lagos who get to see this film to see themselves and feel like the representation is not trying to project an image onto them. What we have attempted to do is significantly different from previous depictions of Lagos, in that we are trying to humanise the people. We are trying to remind people that this is a place where life moves and life is in free flow, not just some caricature. For us, it was pretty paramount because we didn’t want to add to the canon of stereotypes held about the city.
Rachel, what convinced you that the authentic geography of Lagos was non-negotiable to the story?
Rachel Dargavel: I suppose the truth is that in part it’s a road trip movie too, so we had to embrace that part of it. Also, we needed to show the city through the boys' eyes as well as through adult eyes.
It was important that the film was a love letter to Lagos and gave people a visceral experience watching it, both for those who know it and those who don’t, so that they can come away from the film and catch a feel of how Lagos is represented. I think it helps people to embrace the story in a deeper way, to feel like you can almost smell it and touch it yourself. It was necessary that (the film) felt visually and sonically visceral.
Funmbi, as a producer from Lagos, how did you ensure the city’s energy and authenticity were captured on screen, especially for audiences unfamiliar with Nigeria?
Funmbi Ogunbanwo: It's just about being honest. I think if you live in Lagos, you know that everywhere that you point your camera to is like a film. Lagos itself is such a character and sometimes people try to reduce it, people try to gloss over it, and I just wanted to be honest about it.
Can you share a specific memory or experience from your upbringing in Lagos that resurfaced when you saw the script, and influenced your approach as a producer?
Funmbi Ogunbanwo: When I read the script, I instantly recognised Folarin (played by Sope Dirisu) and instantly recognised a lot of the characters like Auntie Seyi (Tosin Adeyemi) and Corridor (Olarotimi Fakunle). I've interacted with a Corridor type of character in Lagos Island before. Wale did such a brilliant job of being so specific about every sort of detail and nuance that Lagos holds as a character. Getting all of that honesty definitely influenced my approach as a producer. I didn't want to shrink anything, I didn't want to reduce anything, I didn't want to colour anything, and I most certainly didn't want to reduce any cultural specificity to make it easier for people. So it was important that Folarin spoke Yoruba, for example, and that he sounded like a Yoruba man and embodied being a Nigerian and a Yoruba father.
This one goes to you, Akinola. For a 93-minute feature with multiple locations across Lagos and Ibadan, what were the most significant directorial challenges you faced?
Akinola Davies Jr: Yeah, I find this question quite funny because every day is a challenge, every frame is a challenge, every moment within a filmmaking process is a challenge. And yeah, that's exactly what we faced, you know, I think it's sort of a logistical feat. Every day literally felt like we moved mountains and I have to hand that over to my producers. I think they really, really worked magic.
(This project) really pushed everyone to their limits and let them know what their limits are. If they thought they knew before, they certainly found out after making this film. For me, I can’t really point to a specific challenge because I'm always thinking of strategy when we're filming. The one exception would be regarding my attempts to make everyone feel seen and heard, get through the days and trust all the collaborators, because everybody on set working is an artist in their own right.
Rachel, considering that the film was shot with finite resources, how did this constraint shape your approach as a producer, and did it fundamentally change the kind of preparation you demanded from all departments?
Rachel Dargavel: It was a huge team effort, but I felt a lot of responsibility (and still do) for the film on multiple levels to make it a success. I think all you can ever really do on a project is try and support the people around you to do their best work and think about how to help them realise their vision. I also have a strong relationship with Akinola, so we would talk about things that might trip us up, things that were potentially undoable and things that we wouldn’t be able to do without. It’s really 100% all about the prep - prep, prep and more prep for the Director and DOP. Knowing the story inside out means that on the day when things go wrong, you can think more clearly and react on the day without panic. It has to always come back to the script and the scene: what is this scene meant to be doing? Why is it important?
How did you balance period authenticity with practical production realities, and what compromises haunted you?
Rachel Dargavel: This was hardest for the art department, as they had to work with a very small budget and to be honest, they performed miracles. We knew early on that in Lagos itself wide shots would be tricky, but we leaned into a timeless feel when out and about and then dressed for period on location.
I don’t think I have anything that haunts me per se, as we managed to get rid of them in post; we did have to get rid of some LED lights and towers, ads on buses, etc. But if you look very closely at one shot, you can see someone has a modern phone in their pocket.
Funmbi, we think you're in the best position to answer this one. The film involved ambitious location shooting with a primarily local crew, many of whom were new to a project of this scale. What were some of the biggest logistical or cultural challenges your team faced in bringing this story to life?
Funmbi Ogunbanwo: I'd start by saying every film is its own machine, with its own people and its own systems. My Father's Shadow was my first feature as a producer. For a lot of the crew, it was our first time working on a project of this scale on film. We brought a lot of passion, eagerness and willingness to learn. I produced the film with Rachel, who is super experienced, and I think having her with me definitely helped with some of the challenges that existed, because she had filmed in Nigeria before as well. I think she understood that Nigeria requires a certain approach to make things work logistically. She trusted me to lead and steer that.
Some of our biggest challenges logistically had to do with our crew size, which was 234 people. We had to transport them to and from Ibadan where we filmed for almost two weeks. I think it was definitely difficult at times, shooting on Third Mainland Bridge for example. But overall, we got through that by having great heads of departments, and we got through that as a team.
I would say that we didn't actually experience many cultural challenges, because the script already took care of that. The script was so honest in its cultural specificity, so there was no separating the culture from the story.
Akinola, this one is specifically for you. The film’s final act resonates with those familiar with Yoruba culture, particularly how the supernatural merges with the physical. How did you approach directing those moments to be both culturally specific and universally accessible at the same time?
Akinola Davies Jr: We're very studious and proud of our country and all the cultures within it. And I think we'd never really seen the sort of expression of grief that we experience as Yoruba people depicted on camera. We really wanted to illustrate the magic and emotiveness that we as a people are accustomed to, the way we like to communicate with each other. I think there's so much power in the voice, the way we sing, the way we talk to each other and the stories we tell…and we wanted to make something that Africans in general can identify with. So much of what we try to do in this film is just create an archive, at least within the entertainment sphere of who we are, because maybe we haven't really done justice to just identifying that on a mundane, grounded level.
I think grief is universal, and to be so specific makes it a universal film. I think people can see and identify with how a culture moves and breathes and is itself and yeah, that's what we tried to do. I think we're very proud of that. We wanted people to have a reference point to see how we move through the world and how we are able to just be with each other.
In your 2021 interview about Lizard, you emphasized the importance of African filmmakers retaining their original form of storytelling rather than becoming Eurocentric or American-influenced. With My Father's Shadow now receiving international acclaim, how have you navigated maintaining that authentic Nigerian voice while working with international co-producers?
Akinola Davies Jr: Yeah, 100%. I work with producers who trust and see the mission of what we're trying to do. I work with a team that is committed to what we're invested in, which is to tell these stories and put resources back into the place that we're from. I think that us being able to author our stories and champion the talent, as well as all that comes with it, has been an eye opener for so many people to see that such a level of international collaboration is possible. I think it takes a certain type of person who wants to tell a poetic and grounded story to be able to trust that vision and trust what we're doing. It doesn't come without challenges for sure, but it's also about the intentionality of who you work with, how you bring them along for the journey, and how you allow them to experience everything. And yeah, I can't say enough about our producers and all those who've collaborated with us, and how much they've trusted us. Hopefully, we can continue to carve out these stories together.
Last question goes to you, Rachel. Looking back at the journey from Lizard to My Father's Shadow, what has this partnership with the Davies brothers taught you about producing deeply personal, culturally specific stories that still aim for universal resonance? And what would you tell other producers considering similar collaborations?
Rachel Dargavel: Wow, erm - this is a big question. So straight up, I cherish my relationship with Akinola and Wale (and Funmbi). It has grown over the 8 years that I have known them, and continues to grow. I have the deepest respect for them and the stories they want to tell, it's not always easy being responsible for such a personal story, especially in the scriptwriting process and the edit when as a producer I am pushing to make choices that emotionally might be hard, but we just have to trust in each other wanting the best for the film.
Akinola and I would on occasion hold hands when things were emotional and difficult things were being said. It would on one level break my heart to muster the strength to say “we need to cut this” or “this isn’t working”, but we worked with the mantra "what’s best for the film?” You have to be a very special person to listen to that as a director, step outside your own personal emotional sphere and see it from another perspective. Akinola and Wale were able to do this, it isn't an easy thing to do. In return, I always challenged myself to do the same; you have to operate in a position of mutual respect and give each other space.
Also, on a cultural level, I am not Nigerian and at times there have been moments that I can’t be part of the film in the same way that I might have been able to if I was, and throughout the process I have had to confront some things about being British and our colonial past with Nigeria as well as many other places in the world that we are inherently part of. I’ll be honest, at times that has been hard, but I always knew that this film would challenge me, and we have had to trust that we can hold space for each other within that.
Over time, I have developed a new relationship to my place in that part of the journey - it's a really complex thing telling a cultural specific story, and I think perhaps we all underestimated that going in! We didn’t set out to be the first Nigerian film in Cannes, but that's what it became, and what a thing to celebrate. All that said, I set out to make a film that could cut through, that could launch a career and mark the arrival of bold new voice(s) and be a success. I took that responsibility very seriously, so did Akin and Wale. I think the film is unique in its personal nature, but it’s also made to serve a larger career aspiration, to bring “The Davies Brothers” to the world, so we had to walk that line, we had to make a film that would serve an audience.
There are many complex things to consider when making a movie like this, both personal and professional, and the relationships are absolutely integral to its success. I think we have all had to open our hearts to each other in a very unique way. I don’t have a huge amount of advice for other people. All I know is that if you believe in the people and the story strongly enough, then it can be done, and if you have the privilege to tell someone else's story, don’t be a dick about it.
My Father’s Shadow is currently showing in theatres across the UK, Ireland, Italy, US and Canada. It will premiere in Spain on 6th March.