Fresh off Cannes win, Akinola imagines future of Nigerian film

Akinola Davies, the director of "My Father's Shadow," Nigeria's first film to win an award at the Cannes film festival, is savouring his return to Lagos, the country's cultural capital, where the movie was released on Friday.

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"I think it's like a homecoming that's well deserved," the British-Nigerian director said in an interview. The film, which won the Special Mention for the Camera D'Or, is an intimate portrayal of a father (Sope Dirisu) and his two sons (Godwin and Chibuike Egbo), attempting to claim back pay they're owed.

Set in Lagos on June 24, 1993, the city seems ready to explode: it's the day that strongman general Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida annuls the results of the presidential elections, held two weeks earlier and set to finally free the country from military rule. "I hope that they feel it's an honest portrayal of what it is like to be Nigerian and the sort of hurdles that life kind of throws at you," Davies, 40, said ahead of the film's premiere on Thursday evening. His brother, Wale, who co-wrote the film, remembers the day vividly. It was a defining moment in the country's trajectory — and at the same time, in a nation where the median age is 19, is for many confined to history books or family lore. "It's the closest thing I've ever seen to mass trauma, actually, where everybody was very disappointed," he said.