Clive Chijioke Nwonka reviews Akinola Davies Jr.'s film *My Father's Shadow* (2025), a semi-autobiographical story of two adolescent brothers traveling through Lagos with their estranged father during the 1993 Nigerian presidential elections. The film, selected for the Cannes Official Selection, employs a metaphysical narrative style rooted in the Nigerian oral tradition, blending literal and spiritual worlds to explore diasporic identity, memory, and cultural preservation.
The review matters because it challenges the Western expectation that African films must be easily translatable and accessible to global audiences. Nwonka argues that *My Father's Shadow* asserts the right to opacity—the ability to remain obscure or untranslatable—as a productive and essential feature of Black creative works. This positions the film as a counterpoint to the commodification of 'Africanness' in global cinema, emphasizing cultural specificity over cross-cultural legibility.