An pressing journey in Nigeria forces two brothers to see past the thriller of their absent father in Akinola Davies Jr’s debut film.
My Father’s Shadow is screening for a restricted run throughout Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town from at the moment (18 September 2026). The film releases as a part of the 13th European Film Festival South Africa (EUFFSA).
The manufacturing, from the British-Nigerian director, gained a BAFTA Award for excellent debut. The film makes use of a childhood perspective to develop a particular strategy to African-set cinematic storytelling.
Set within the countryside outdoors Lagos on a sweltering day in June 1993, the story begins when bored brothers Remi and Akin are stunned to seek out their normally absent father, Folarin, at residence. Their shock deepens when he tells them to dress and accompany him on an pressing journey.
Tensions over the outcomes of the overall election construct because the household travels by means of the town. Remi and Akin be taught unsettling particulars about their father’s previous and current earlier than changing into caught in one of many nation’s most vital political moments. Their instant battle is to return to their mom and residential.
Haunting imagery meets the bustling, vivid and offended life surrounding the household. The film pays tribute to the creators’ father and to folks who battle every single day to maintain their households alive and collectively amid broader social and political turmoil.
Sope Dirisu leads the solid alongside younger brothers Godwin and Chibuike Egbo. Davies Jr co-wrote the function along with his brother, Wale Davies, drawing inspiration from a reminiscence of their very own father.
“As the world faces ever faster and enormous changes, the festival’s offerings from across the continent paints intimate, human portraits of family in all its different forms as vital to personal, psychological and social survival,” says the EUFFSA.
“The festival pays tribute to the tireless dedication and vision of a former co-director of the festival Peter Rorvik, who sadly passed away earlier this year. Peter was a passionate supporter of independent films, and nurtured a generation of film lovers and filmmakers across South Africa and beyond for decades.”
My Father’s Shadow is one among 12 movies on this 12 months’s EUFFSA. The pageant gives the next details about the remaining 11 productions:
Opening the pageant is The Last Viking, with Denmark’s greatest star Mads Mikkelsen, main the star-studded solid of this madcap, blackly comedian Danish family-drama/crime-caper-noir about brothers, psychological well being, previous secrets and techniques, the Beatles and getting by with greater than somewhat little bit of assist from your folks.
Germany’s providing Fatherland directed by Oscar-winning director Paweł Pawlikowski (Ida and Cold War), European cinema’s grasp of visible and narrative precision, delivers a tightly managed, intimate, and heart-breaking portrait of German literature’s legendary Thomas Mann as he and his daughter make a journey throughout a nation attempting to grapple with grief and the horrors of the previous because the Cold War rages. Winner of the Best Director prize at this 12 months’s Cannes Festival, the movie stars Oscar-nominated Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall).
In Young Mothers (Belgium), the a number of award-winning Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne paint a small, gritty, and empathetic portrait of the struggles of younger moms. Abandoned by their households and society, these brave and anxious younger ladies help one another as they make the primary of many robust grownup choices of their lives. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at Cannes this 12 months.
Oscar- and BAFTA-winning main Italian director Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty) reteams with collaborator Toni Servillo in La Grazia (Italy). Servillo gained a Best Actor statue on the Venice Film Festival for his efficiency on this elegantly styled, intimate drama about fathers, daughters, love, responsibility and the everlasting query of “who owns our days?”- set towards the grubby backdrop of Italian politics.
Colours of Time (France), directed by Cédric Klapisch is a household drama that weaves collectively tales from one household’s nineteenth century previous and their Twenty first-century current. A memorably pleasant and touching exploration of artwork, household and historical past.
Porcelain War (Ukraine) directed by Brendan Bellomo and this gorgeous documentary’s key protagonist, Slava Leontyev, is an inspirational Oscar-nominated movie wherein Leontyev, his spouse, and their good friend inform, at nice private threat and with footage they shot, the story of how their lives as artists had been brutally upended by the struggle in Ukraine. Now, with roles as Ukrainian troopers – they’ve by no means misplaced their ardour for artwork and nature as they threat every little thing for household, nation and freedom.
Oscar winner Javier Bardem offers a brooding efficiency because the fictional, acclaimed, mercurial Spanish movie director Esteban Martínez in The Beloved (Spain). Director Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s Martinez returns to his homeland to movie a colonial-era interval drama set within the Western Sahara. The movie unravels the delicate relationship between fathers and daughters and asks troublesome questions on private sacrifices made in service of artwork.
In A Family (Netherlands) Dutch director Mees Peijnenburg gives a strong window on divorce in fashionable Europe, instructed empathetically by means of the eyes of a brother and sister attempting to every discover their very own methods and hopefully a path collectively by means of the aftermath of the bitter struggle between their dad and mom. It stars Carice van Houten (Game of Thrones) and Pieter Embrechts.
Veteran award-winning Polish director Agnieszka Holland gives an brisk and usually vibrant biopic concerning the enigmatic literary genius Franz Kafka, in Franz. The movie contemplates its protagonist, his troublesome relationship along with his father, and imagines how his legacy may be celebrated sooner or later.
Ireland’s Christy is the debut function from Brendan Canty that has picked up many nominations and awards at this 12 months’s Irish Film and TV Awards for its tender route and spectacular lead efficiency from Danny Power because the title character – an adolescent with a murkily remembered tragic previous, who, after he’s kicked out of his newest foster residence, returns to Cork to stick with his estranged brother. As he tries to determine his future, he rediscovers the connection along with his brother and begins to think about a house amongst folks in a spot he would possibly but develop to know and love.
The extraordinary and authentic, Aquí (Portugal) is director Tiago Guedes’ bold, epic and suitably enigmatic adaptation of the Jesus trilogy of novels by South African Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. It stays true to its supply materials’s humanist hopes, despairs and probing of the everlasting philosophical questions that maintain households and societies eternally (and anxiously) transferring onward.
* To view screening particulars, go to the European Film Festival South Africa web site here.
*Jason Bannier is a knowledge analyst at World Wide Worx and deputy editor of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Bluesky at @jas2bann.