MY FATHER'S SHADOW — Akinola Davies Jr. dreams of 90s Nigeria

0:03 Akinola Davies Jr. never really knew his father. My father, who I'm named after, he passed when I was 20 months. I think my brother would have been three or maybe four years old. I don't know the specifics around it, but I know he developed epilepsy and then he sort of died from a seizure. Today, the director lives in south London, but when he was growing up in Lagos, Nigeria, in the early '90s, he heard a lot of stories about his dad.

0:29 Some of them came from his family. Me and my mum were super close. We're still pretty close, but when I was younger we were like super, super close and I must have asked her, time and again, how she met my father. Why did she marry him? Why him? He was quite an emotional guy. He had difficulty with his father and stuff like that.

0:45 And other stories came from family friends who seemed to know a lot about his father. I would tell them my name, you know, as a sign of respect when you go into someone's house, they'd hug me and they're like, "We loved your father, he was my brother." People used to call him Brother Akin. So people would be like, "Oh, he's my best friend, "he took care of us when we were young."

1:03 Then there were the photographs. He wore these really thick glasses, like really thick framed glasses. And there's pictures where he's like younger and like sleeveless shirt and with like a gold necklace or something, looking very relaxed. And he liked music and he liked fashion, as you could tell in the pictures.

1:19 And he came from a well to do family so I think he was quite cultured. He travelled. We'd seen pictures with cigarettes, I guess he probably smoked from time to time. But isn't it fascinating how you have all of these images and you have this quite rich picture of him that's been built by all these different people in your life.

1:40 And yet at the heart of it, he's still a mystery to you. Completely. Even when I was saying all of that, I was like, I have no idea what he sounds like. Still, I have no idea what his favourite colour is, or like what his favourite meal is, or... Considering the fact I've made a film about this person and like he's been the subject of so many conversations, I still don't really know much about him at all, only fragments of what people have said.

2:07 Akinola's movie is called <i>My Father's Shadow,</i> and sure enough, it's the story of two kids learning about a dad they barely know. The main characters are brothers Akin and Remi, who journey from their rural village to the big city of Lagos with their estranged father, Folarin, played by Sope Dirisu, in the election year of 1993.

2:28 <i>- Are you boys ready? - Yes, Daddy.</i> <i>Now follow me to Lagos today.</i> They haven't seen him for years, but through their eyes, we start to understand the complexities that kept him away and they start to see the kind of man he is, tough, tender and trying his best in a country on the edge. <i>Sometimes it's hard to know what to do.</i> I'm Simran Hans, sitting in for Rico Gagliano.

2:56 Welcome back to the MUBI Podcast. MUBI's the global film company that champions great cinema. And on this show, we tell you the stories behind great cinema. Today is one of our special episodes. It's my conversation with Akinola Davies Jr. about <i>My Father's Shadow,</i> his debut film streaming on MUBI, almost globally, from the 10th of April.

3:17 Akinola co-wrote it with his older brother, Wale. It earned a special mention for the Caméra d'Or prize in Cannes, and in February it won a BAFTA for Outstanding British Debut. You may have heard his speech from that night, which went viral. <i>To all those whose parents migrated to obtain a better life for their children,</i> <i>to the economic migrant,</i> <i>the conflict migrant, those under occupation, dictatorship, persecution</i> <i>and those experiencing genocide.</i> <i>You matter.

3:40 Your stories matter more than ever,</i> <i>your dreams are an act of resistance.</i> <i>To those watching at home,</i> <i>archive your loved ones,</i> <i>archive your stories yesterday, today and forever.</i> <i>For Nigeria, for London, the Congo, Sudan, free Palestine.</i> <i>Thank you.</i> We'll hear about how Akinola recreated his own hazy childhood memories to tell this story, the ingenious ways he managed to get a pair of remarkable performances from two first time child actors, and how his days as a DJ led to his Sundance winning short film <i>Lizard.</i> First, though, I asked Akinola what prompted him to start making a film about his dad.

4:17 He told me it all started with his brother, Wale. He was watching <i>Oprah</i> and there was a prompt of writing a letter to a bereaved friend or family, and he tried to write a letter to our dad. And about eight times he tried and every time he would break down in tears. So I think he realised, "Okay, there's something to investigate there."

4:41 And then he ended up writing a script, and then he sent it to me and I read it and just like broke down. In the same way I just said, I don't know what my dad sounded like or what his favourite colour was. I just never pictured what his personality was like, outside of what I've been told. And Wale wrote Folarin as unsure of himself and quite vulnerable.

5:03 He had a voice. He was saying things, and I just never really imagined that. I obviously had a big cry. And then I messaged him and I was like, "Whoa, what was that?" A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be at the Tate Modern screening of the film. It was in the tanks of the Tate, and the film was projected onto three screens.

5:27 And in the round in the middle were the incredible musicians who score the film, including Duval Timothy and CJ Mirra. And after the film finished, when everyone, myself included, was wiping away the tears, and it wasn't even the first time I'd seen the film as well. So I'd cried once and I cried again.

5:48 You said to this room of people, most of them young, many of them Black. You said, document your family, archive your family. Why was it important to say that to the people in the room? I think a lot of people maybe neglect thinking that their own stories are important, or the stories from their parents are important, or the stories from their grandparents are important.

6:11 If people don't feel they have the permission to do things, they might not do it. I think it's really important to record people in the here and now so that we don't forget their stories. Well, I wanted to use that as a starting point to talk about the film and how it brings together memoir and fiction and these documentary elements and dreams as well.

6:34 Why did you want to archive this particular family story? I think I wanted to archive it because for so long, no one spoke about it in my family. I don't remember speaking about anything to do with grief or my father's passing until we were making <i>My Father's Shadow</i>. My brother was-- Yeah, he basically idolised our father, whereas I was the complete opposite.

6:59 I was quite angry with my father for passing. Even though he died of natural causes and couldn't really help it. I didn't have something that other people had. And even when other people would complain about their dads or whatever, in my head, I'd always be like, well, at least you have one, you know.

7:16 The film to me has this texture of a memory. Tell me about how you and Jermaine Edwards, your cinematographer, created that using the tools of cinema. I'm very obsessed with every aspect of cinema. I used to work in costume, very badly. I used to work in production design, very badly. I used to assist. I used to edit.

7:38 You know, I tried to produce a couple of things. I held cameras before as a videographer. I did that for quite a while actually, I was a videographer. So all those areas I'm just really fascinated with. So when it comes to texture, there's so many layers. So first you have the cinematography. So we chose to shoot on film.

7:57 Film, I think is the most beautiful format. I think we haven't seen a lot of Lagos on film or, you know, at least I haven't. And I think Super 16 is also a little bit rough, a little bit nostalgic. Also, I wanted to see Nigeria on film and black skin on film. I always tell hair and makeup-- 'Cause Black skin absorbs light in a different way, whereas white skin reflects it.

8:21 So actually with Black skin, there's a lot more highlights that you can pick up if you oil the skin. So there's always like baby oil or Vaseline on set. Different tones of Black skin can look different on camera. It can be quite blue, it can be quite bright, it can be very brown. There's different hues and colour gradients there, which I think is a very underrated thing in cinematography.

8:43 But a lot of the films I love, like Malik Sayeed's cinematography in <i>Belly</i> or Christian Epps' lighting for <i>Clockers</i> or <i>Selma.</i> <i>I will see you in dreams.</i> There's a sound design which I'm like obsessed with because I think sound design is really the key to digging this sort of subversive undercurrent of feeling that people take for granted.

9:07 I think sound design can really throw an audience and make an audience feel very unsure. The theme was decay. Rotting fruit was the analogy I gave people. One side is fine, the other side's rotten. So this idea of things being bittersweet. When you talk about texture, there's just so many things that you can play with as a filmmaker, and I like to play with all of them.

9:36 You mentioned the sound design by CJ Mirra, who co-composed the score, and I wanted to talk about the music he made with Duval Timothy for the film. What kinds of conversations did you have with them about what the music needed to do? I wanted to feel like potentially children are playing it, or use an instrument that one side of the piano is in tune and the other side's out of tune.

9:58 This idea of decay. I told Duval, I don't want to work from any temp music, so can you send me a lot of music? And he made loads of music, then we went into the edit and we were like, yeah, we can't use any of that. There was one thing I really liked. It goes... and it just like drops out. And I was like, keep that.

10:14 That feels like the bottom's just fallen out of something. But the rest, he basically had to like start from scratch. He thinks it was the best thing that happened to him. Because before he's making music, like, that he thinks he should be making. Whereas the second time around, he's making music for what he's feeling in that moment with the picture.

10:36 Before you were a filmmaker, you were a DJ. Can you talk about the club night that you ran in London and how it shaped your taste? It was called Public Displays of Affection. We were all a collective of DJ's who would throw a very hedonistic party two, three times a year in Hackney, basically at this club called Bar A Bar, and it was just a place where, like, everyone could freely express themselves.

10:59 Often times, there was a lot of dressing up, a lot of pageantry. It was a really fun night, which brought DJs who were quite avant garde in the way they played and the way they saw music and the way they put it together. And it was just a very inspiring place for me. As someone who grew up in Nigeria, who was quite wrapped in cotton wool, went to boarding school, then went to Brighton, and I was like, okay, people are different.

11:23 Arca played PDA, Kelela played PDA one of my favourite DJ's called Total Freedom, played PDA, but it just meant that I was exposed to loads of different types of music. And then I also assisted these guys called Tim and Barry, and we did a show called Just Jam. And in one of those shows I booked this artist called Mica Levi, who had a band called Micachu & The Shapes that my best friend told me about.

11:46 And I was like, "Oh, I remember that." <i>Just in case...</i> <i>Just in case I've covered for the worst</i> <i>In case I, case I</i> That one. So I was like, "Oh, let's get Mica." Then Mica came on the show, then we started a friendship and ultimately Mica is the one who introduced me to Eva Yates and Rose Garnett at the BBC.

12:08 They're in the credits of my film because they started this journey to filmmaking. And Mica Levi is obviously also an incredible composer in their own right, and their score for <i>Under the Skin,</i> Jonathan Glazer's film is one of the defining avant garde scores of our era of films. A hundred percent.

12:28 You should hear their score for <i>Monos.</i> <i>Monos</i> was basically the template that we used for <i>Lizard.</i> With cinema... The needle drop thing is great, if you have the means to do it, fantastic, because it plays towards people's nostalgia. But I just think we can create new, just utilising what we have at our disposal.

12:49 People like your Duvals, like your Kelly Morans, your CJ Mirras, your Christian aTunde Scott. Like there's just so many incredible artists. Nala Sinephro who did the music for <i>Smashing Machine</i> as well. Kokoroko, Moses Boyd, Yussef Dayes, who I'd worked with on a score before about Fela Kuti. All these bands, they can do it.

13:11 They can make music for film. In this movie, CJ and Duval knock it out of the park. One of the most evocative scenes in the film is when Akin, Remi and Folarin hitch a ride to the city of Lagos, taking in the sights from the back of a flatbed truck. The song that plays underneath that scene is called Journey to Lagos.

13:37 Like the imagery, the music is beautiful. We also wanted it to feel extremely overwhelming because that's what Lagos is like as a place. We'd go to other cities in Africa and be like, "Oh, there's like no one here." And it's like, yeah, because Lagos is 20 million people and everybody's fighting for every corner.

13:54 So it was like a real sensory overload. The two boys and their father, get on the back of a truck and that truck drives them into Lagos. There's just these things that you would always recognise. So one was these three statues. Anybody who remembers in the '90s, coming into Lagos, you had these three chiefly men.

14:14 It was a white statue saying, "Welcome to Lagos" underneath on the expressway. But then they go over the Third Mainland Bridge. <i>This is the Third Mainland Bridge.</i> <i>It is the longest bridge in the whole of Africa.</i> Over the bridge you can see the University of Lagos, which is this building with these, sort of black panels on them.

14:35 Coming into Lagos, like you can't miss it. And then equally, there is a big community called Makoko, which is the largest floating slum in Africa. It's called the Venice of Africa. And then we just had the people. 'Cause it was very important that when you come to Lagos, it's just so many people moving in all different directions.

14:56 And it's such a cacophony of things happening. There's livestock on people's shoulders and stuff like that. <i>I don't know, maybe they're all going to work.</i> The energy is just really electric when you come into a city, a city like Lagos. I want to talk about the two little boys in the film, Marvellous and Godwin, who play Remi and Akin.

15:23 <i>Follow me to Lagos today.</i> <i>But Mommy said you shouldn't leave the house, that we should wait for her.</i> <i>And why don't you stay and wait for her?</i> <i>You can tell her I went with Daddy to Lagos.</i> <i>But she put you in charge.</i> <i>Hopefully your mommy comes back before we go, otherwise</i> <i>we just have to leave a message for her.</i> They're incredible.

15:44 What struck you about them when you first met them? Funnily enough, not a lot. They were very tactile. That's what I remember. I didn't know they were real brothers. And I was like, "These two are quite tactile. "Maybe they've just become best friends." But I was focussed on other kids, other kids who kind of performed louder and brighter.

16:03 Maybe they'd been in films before or on TV. We did these two day workshops and on the first day they were their last name was labelled wrong. So it was like Egbo Godwin and Marvellous Egbo. So I was like, obviously they're just not related. Marvellous had his hand on Godwin's feet when we were all sat in a circle and I was like, everyone should keep an eye on these two, something's going on here.

16:28 And then the next day they were labelled properly and we realised they were siblings. And Rachel and Funmbi, both my producers, Rachel Dargavel and Funmbi Ogunbanwo, they just lost it. They were like, "Oh my God, they're real brothers. "It would be the dream to have real brothers." And I was like, "Relax. Everyone relax."

16:46 There's these other kids here who I have a little bit more faith in because they're a lot more performative. That was like very into the idea of casting kids who'd done it before, as opposed to kids who hadn't. - Why is that? - I was just scared of losing them. You know, you start shooting and then two weeks in, they just-- They don't wanna do it anymore.

17:06 You know, for me, that would be a nightmare. What do you mean you don't want to do it anymore? How can you force kids to do something they don't want to do? And I guess it was also my insecurities or my sort of anxieties of being a first time director. But what we noticed on the second day was that they remembered dialogue really well.

17:28 And Marvellous and Godwin were almost mini-directing the scene. We would tell them what to do, and then they'd tell the other boys what to do and where to stand. Everyone pulled me to one side and they were like, you can't buy this chemistry that they have. And everybody was like, really fingers crossed for them that they would get through the second day. And they did.

17:49 I mean, I think they were very rough around the edges. So I was still a little bit like, "Oh God." Trying to get a specific performance out of a 12-year-old - and an 8-year-old, is no joke. - Yeah. What were some of your tactics for getting those performances out of them? So firstly, we had three acting coaches with them over the course of prep and filming.

18:13 We surrounded the boys with acting coaches because I just knew I wouldn't be able to be with them the whole time. And even if I was with them, I've never made a feature before. And other than that, I incentivised the boys by saying we were going to play. Everything we were going to do is just about playing, and if they played and enjoyed what they were doing, I would reward them.

18:34 I bought them Polaroid cameras, these little Polaroid cameras, and if we'd run out and I was like, if you give me good performances for the next couple of days, I'll buy you guys more film. So they would always like get more film. That's what I got them, I realised after the shoot that they'd like got a bicycle and they got an iPad from my brother.

18:53 So I think they like unionised behind behind my back and were getting more and more things. But effectively, I think it was just really important that there was always people who had maternal instincts to vouch for them if they were tired, if they were hungry, if they weren't feeling it. Like one of our exec producers, Moya De Young, was like, she has a child as well, so she was with them.

19:14 And I remember once she came and said to me, she was like, "They feel like they haven't been playing for the last week or so, "and you promised them they would be playing." So I had to take them to the side and be like, "Guys, look, I'm really sorry. I know I promised you this, "I'm going to make an effort to make sure that we're playing a lot more."

19:30 And then we got them loads of board games and stuff and a football. So when they're not on set, they can just be like hanging out and having fun. Obviously, this isn't the first time you've made a film from a child's perspective either. Your short film <i>Lizard,</i> is also from the perspective of a little kid.

19:45 What do children offer you in terms of perspective as a storyteller? My second short film, <i>X US</i> is also from the perspective of kids as well. I think the way kids see the world is quite simple. You know, they don't come with preconceived notions of society or people or anything like that. Or if they do, it's sort of inherited from the way their caregivers see the world or give them information.

20:12 Kids don't ask things in a sort of politically correct way. They're just like, "Why is there a disabled guy in the middle of the street?" Beyond the curiosity, their imagination allows the mundane to feel really magical. And I think there's something about that when making films is just so permissible.

20:32 Everything is in like, people floating around and flying and stuff. It's just the minutiae of the world just feels really magical in their eyes. I feel we should briefly talk about Sope because his performance is wonderful. He plays a character who's based on your dad, but he's not your dad. Yes. How did you talk to him about bringing that character to life?

20:57 But also, him putting his own spin on this character and not feeling like he had to step into the shoes of your father. What did he bring? Sope, I think we had a couple of conversations. One was like, "Look, I'm not asking you to be my dad." It's quite intimidating for you to be mine and Wale's dad as we're both on set.

21:17 We're not asking you to perform someone. In fact, even if we did, we don't know what our dad's like, so that's not what we're asking. We're just asking you to give us your representation of this character that you've seen on paper. I sent him pictures of my dad and sent him some archive videos of Lagos in that period of time.

21:34 But really, he came with his own ideas, his own interpretation of the character. I almost didn't ask him anything or tell him to do anything. The kids are the sort of heart of the story, but Sope is really like the soul of it. That sort of masculinity, you just don't see that often. Can you say more about what you mean by that sort of masculinity?

21:54 It was very important for me and my brother that, you know, we're raised with the matriarchs in our life. We've always had access to being able to talk about emotions. People always never shut down us being emotional, us crying, us asking questions. And I think there's not very many portrayals of that type of masculinity on screen.

22:12 Just showing young men that it's alright for our fathers to be emotional, to have emotional conversations with our fathers. And I think a lot of it was just trying to readdress these stereotypes of the absent Black father. We just wanted to offer some context and nuance. Not saying he's like a perfect dad or anything.

22:31 And just also take masculinity off a pedestal and humanise it to a certain point. In the scene on the beach where Folarin is talking about his grief over losing his brother. He talks about it in this really direct way that I think is quite unusual and very striking because you don't always see those emotional conversations playing out in that direct manner in certain cultures.

22:59 I think vulnerability is not the language. Yes. - It's not part of our elders' language. - Completely. I'm wondering how your own elders and other people in the Nigerian community have responded to that vulnerability and tenderness. It allowed people to remember people in their family that they'd also grieved.

23:23 Allowed people in Nigeria to have more conversations about loss within their families. And I think it also allowed people to hold space for their fathers in a way that they maybe hadn't considered. When you meet your father, they're just like a super human character, but you kind of forget that they were also young and also made mistakes and maybe lost friends and maybe had their heart broken, maybe broke hearts and things like that.

23:50 Especially in Nigerian culture, like we just... And I don't want to generalise, but there's this notion of distance between children and fathers, particularly. Because women run the household. You know, women take care of the kids, women do everything. So there's always been this like distance between fathers.

24:09 Loads of people in Nigeria, outside of Nigeria, were like, we took our fathers to watch the film or we had a conversation with our father of their memories and them growing up and stuff like that. How has making this film expanded your idea of what it means to archive something? Oh, wow. I think I was already on the archive train because I've been making films about my mum.

24:30 I've made countless films about my mum. And I think it's just made me a lot more cognisant of how little people know in Nigeria of their own history, their own culture. People that live in Europe were so like obsessed with Europe and European culture, but we know so little about what happens in the rest of the world, the historical context of the rest of the world.

24:52 Why an area's the way it is, why a migrant crisis, for example, can be the way it is. I think what would serve us better collectively would be to connect more of those dots. It might be a bit idyllic to say it would make the world a better place, but I think it would give a much more honest and straightforward history.

25:15 The history that's been taught for generations and generations is a version of history. History is written by the victors. By definition, the people who lost had their history sort of scrapped. That's why I speak about archiving a lot, because I think archiving is really important. Because if you are not considered the dominant narrative or the status quo, your history, due to globalisation, is probably shrinking and shrinking and shrinking.

25:41 But the more we can archive it, it means we can sort of fossilize it and keep it. And the people who are from that culture tell a more accurate story of what that culture was like. I'm very much invested in doing that for my culture. Akinola Davies Jr. <i>My Father's Shadow</i> is streaming on MUBI from the 10th of April in the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland and lots of other countries.

26:08 Check the show notes for more information on how to watch. And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week. Follow us so you don't miss our upcoming season. Regular host, Rico Gagliano, will be back next time with a season about great movies with great needle drops, starting with the story of how a '70s tune about West Virginia suddenly got embraced in '90s Japan.

26:29 Because it was featured in the '95 anime film <i>Whisper of the Heart.</i> I was in Japan, and the middle school marching band comes like stomping out playing <i>Country Roads.</i> And I started to cry. I was like, "What is wrong with me? This is so beautiful." Hayao Miyazaki takes Japan down country roads, featuring a rare interview with one of the founders of the legendary Studio Ghibli.

26:54 Follow us so you don't miss it. Also, if you love the show, do leave us a five star review wherever you listen. It helps others find and love us too. And if you've got questions, comments, or you want to tell us about how you're archiving your own family story, our email is podcast@mubi.com Now, let's roll credits.

27:13 This episode was written and hosted by me, Simran Hans. Ciara McEniff is our producer with help from assistant producer Kat Kowalczyk. Christian Koons edited it. Our theme music is by Yuri Suzuki. Special thanks this week to Tower Bridge Studios. Rico Gagliano story edited and is our executive producer along with Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca.

27:36 And finally, to watch the best in cinema, subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com Thanks for listening and dig out those family photos, you never know what you might find.