Lagos, 12 June 1993. Brothers Akin and Remi are playing outside their home in the countryside when their father Folarin (Sopé Dìrísù), rarely present in their lives, unexpectedly appears. He takes them along into the city to collect overdue wages, and what follows is a rare day together — through busy streets, markets, beaches and nighttime drives — as the political unrest in the country gradually escalates around them.

The film is semi-autobiographical: director Akinola Davies Jr. and his brother and co-writer Wale Davies lost their father when they were very young. My Father's Shadow gives shape to memories that may never have taken place — as much an imagining of what could have been as a retelling of what was. Through Jermaine Edwards' intimate, naturalistic cinematography and Omar Guzmán Castro's elliptical editing, we see Lagos through a child's eyes: sensory and fragmented, charged with fascination and unease. Sopé Dìrísù gives the father a quiet, magnetic presence that shifts between myth and vulnerability — a figure seen from below, admired and incomprehensible in equal measure.

The film had its world premiere in Un Certain Regard at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, as the first Nigerian film in the festival's Official Selection, and received the Caméra d'Or Special Mention. It has since won the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut and the BIFA for Best Director.