My Father’s Shadow (12A)

Director Akinola Davies Jnr. Nigerian with English subtitles. 1h 33m.

Does love equal absence? A crazy question you might think, but it’s the one that drives the narrative of director Akinola Davies Jnr’s debut feature. Taking a child’s eye view, an errant father, unaccountably and briefly returns, in all his imagined magnificence and mystery. Why has he come home? It turns out, to make off with his two young boys and give them a glimpse of his real life in a city in meltdown. It’s the 1983 uprising. What the boys can make of all this gives the film its truly remarkable edge.