After being announced as the debut Nigerian feature project selected for the 78th Cannes Film Festival, My Father’s Shadow had its world premiere on 18th May, 2025 where it screened as part of the Un Certain Regard section. The film earned Akinola Davies Jr, its director, a Special Mention for the Caméra d’Or (the prize awarding the festival’s best first feature film). My Father’s Shadow landed in Nigerian theatres despite uncertainties about its box-office potential.
The anxiety from critics and film-loving audiences was informed by the documented treatment that Nigerian niche-and-film-festival-leaning titles (interpreted as art house films) have hitherto received. Consider Kenneth Gyang’s Confusion Nawa, the Esiri Brothers’ Eyimofe (This is My Desire), the S16 Collective‘s (Obasi, Abba T. Makama, and Michael Omonua) Juju Stories, and Mildred Okwo’s La Femme Anjola. Interestingly, commercially appealing titles, including Akay Mason’s Red Circle, Toyin Abraham’s Oversabi Aunty, and Niyi Akinmolayan‘s Colours of Fire aren’t spared.
Distributed by FilmOne Entertainment, the film was released on 19th September, 2025, and became the highest-grossing Nigerian film in theatres for its opening weekend. By its second weekend (September 26th–28th, 2025), the film had an additional ₦3.8 million. The film had a modest ₦16.8 million box-office return after its short-lived theatrical run. The modest box-office return has been ascribed to industry gatekeeping and limited screen allocations in local theatre chains. As recent tweets show, Nigerian audiences haven’t been primed for such niche films. At the recently concluded African Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA), the film was the most awarded title of the night. It won Best Writing in a Movie, Best Movie, Best Director, Best Score/Music, and Best Sound/Sound Design. This win has generated public discourse about the unfair treatment of other deserving nominated Nigerian titles. The concern is the film’s dual citizenship and its representation of the United Kingdom for the Oscar submission for Best International Feature at the 98th Academy Awards.
Shock, a Nigerian film trade publication, framed it as Nigerian at Cannes, British at the Oscars. A section of Nigerians are concerned about the film’s identity. In interviews with Culture Custodian and other film-focused publications, the director emphasizes the Nigerianess of the project. The director is Nigerian, though domiciled abroad, the producer is Nigerian, and a large number of its cast, technical, and crew members hold the green passport. However, the funding is non-Nigerian. This dual citizenship problem becomes most visible at the Oscars because the Academy forces a binary choice: unmindful of the co-production, the film must pick a flag. The colonial irony is precise and evident. Continental award shows become the only stage where these co-produced films can be claimed as African, and even that claim is contested, as the My Father’s Shadow AMVCA controversy showed.
Globally, a film’s nationality is determined by factors including financing, ownership and control, key personnel, language, and cultural content. Under a co-production treaty, a film qualifies as a national production in each partner nation. This gives it access to the benefits available to local film industries in both countries. This explains the Nigerian at Cannes, British at the Oscars privilege and associated tension My Father’s Shadow has been exposed to.
In 2004, the Criterion Forum opened a discussion with the question: “What attributes make a film’s country of origin?” There was a consensus that financing is the defining factor in identifying a film’s national identity. Thus, if a film is filmed in Nigeria with a predominantly Nigerian cast and crew members, such as My Father’s Shadow, but is financed by France or Britain, it isn’t a Nigerian production. A contributor stated that one can’t nationalize a film however they like, especially when different bodies with different vested interests apply different rules, but the industry standard seems to be financing. “If all the money comes from France, then it’s a French film, even if it was filmed in Nigeria with a local cast by a German director and a Japanese DOP. If Nigerian or German or Japanese financing was also involved, it’s a French/ Nigerian/ German/ Japanese co-production,” the user concluded. Other contributors noted that it’s sometimes impossible to decide the nationality of a film, and that one must simply accept that a film can be a co-production between countries. Thus, this is a longstanding unresolved debate that isn’t specific to Nollywood.
Paulin Soumanou, filmmaker and scholar, Ousmane Sembène, Senegal director and author, and others were concerned with the concept of a distinctly “African” cinema. They prioritized films made by Africans, telling African stories, and principally for African audiences. In Kate Cowcher’s paper, African Films and FESPACO, the abstract stated that for Vieyra, Sembène, and their contemporaries, it was essential to take back control of the art of cinema on the African continent, where it had predominantly been deployed as a colonial tool. “FESPACO was conceived as the regular forum for those committed to its development to come together and share their work.” FESPACO is the ideological origin of what’s considered African cinema as a category. The FESPACO Grand Prize criteria (The Étalon de Yennenga) is awarded to the feature film judged as best reflecting African cultural identity or the social realities of Africa today, while also being remarkable for the rigour of its construction, its technical qualities, and the mastery of its staging.
My Father’s Shadow was presented by BBC Film and the BFI (awarding National Lottery funding), in association with The Match Factory, Fremantle, Electric Theatre Collective, and MUBI. Basically, it is an Element Pictures production in association with Crybaby and Fatherland Productions. The film also benefited from pivotal early-stage development backing from BBC Film, which had previously championed the Davies brothers’ award-winning short Lizard.
The logistical challenges were significant: most camera and grip equipment came from the UK due largely to 16mm requirements, while lighting was sourced locally. In an interview with Screen Global Production, the producer, Funmbi Ogunbanwo, acknowledged the stage of infrastructure and financing in Nigeria. “The infrastructure for financing is something that is still developing in Nigeria, as far as film is concerned,” she says. “Private and public government entities are actively trying to develop the entire ecosystem where financing is concerned for film and for TV, but I wouldn’t say it’s quite set yet.”
Speaking at the Nigeria Film and Videos Censor Board’s 5th Peace Anyam-Osigwe Nigeria Digital Content Regulation Conference, Stephanie Linus, the Nigeria’s Official Selection Committee (NOSC) chairperson, explained that the international funding and conditions disallowed the producers of My Father’s Shadow to submit it to the NOSC for consideration. Thus, it’s understandable that the concern is that the project isn’t a Nigerian film, regardless of the national affiliation of its cast and crew members. There was also a sense of betrayal among Nigerian cinephiles who opined that the film leans into its Nigerianess (at Cannes and the AMVCA) when convenient.
My Father’s Shadow dual-citizenship tension isn’t an isolated conversation in African cinema. From the early 2000’s to date, there have been a select number of African titles with similar tension. Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not a Witch is a British-French co-production, with majority funding from the BFI and Film4, set entirely in Zambia with a mostly non-professional Zambian cast. The film was selected as the British entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards. Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is a Zambia-UK-Ireland co-production backed by A24, BBC Film, Fremantle, and Element Pictures.
The film had enjoyed international distribution but minimal distribution in Zambia and on the continent. Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi is a South African/UK production because some production finance came from the UK. But South Africa had a co-production treaty that allowed the film to be submitted as a South African entry, not a UK one for the Oscars, for which it won. Mati Diop’s Atlantics is a France-Senegal-Belgium co-production filmed in Wolof, French, and English. The film was submitted by Senegal to compete for the 2020 International Feature Film. The director is French-Senegalese, born in Paris, with the Senegalese side of the story coming through family and cultural inheritance rather than residency. Senegal claimed it, though funding came from France.
In an interview with IndieWire, Nyoni flagged the contradiction when she stated “I’m very uncomfortable about proclaiming that what is essentially a British-produced film accomplished something in Zambia that was already in the works and would have happened anyway.” In another interview with the BFI, she commented on the identity split by saying, “In Africa, I’m an African director. In Cannes, I was a Zambian director — they didn’t even acknowledge the British part. But I definitely feel Welsh-Zambian, if that’s a thing.”
The “betrayal” and stated “unNigerianess” of My Father’s Shadow lies in this structural and cultural impact of dual citizenship on African film identity. In Africa, dual citizenship, especially for filmmakers seeking international funding and distribution, isn’t a filmmaker’s choice but a problem of needing the right finances and structure. This has created a situation where African stories are legally co-owned by European infrastructure. The film travels the world, but the country of origin loses the administrative right to claim it on the world’s biggest stages.
The fundamental structural problem is that serious filmmaking on the African continent, the ones that travel internationally, currently requires European infrastructure to achieve the production quality that international festival circuits and distributors require. This creates a closed loop: African countries cannot build indigenous infrastructure because their films don’t generate enough revenue to reinvest, and their films don’t generate enough revenue partly because the distribution and awards infrastructure that creates that revenue is controlled by the same European institutions that co-produced the film. The money that should cycle back into Nigerian cinema cycles back into Western cinemas through international distribution.
There’s also a conversation around extractive cinema to be held. European institutions and infrastructure fund African stories and own rights to distribution and domestic access. In the case of My Father’s Shadow, as stated above, it was distributed in Nigeria despite valid concerns that it wasn’t marketed for a Nigerian audience. But, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl and I Am Not a Witch experienced different fates. The distribution rights are held by MUBI and A24, platforms with limited African infrastructure and premium pricing that excludes mass domestic audiences.
The most lasting cultural impact of dual citizenship is canonisation by the wrong institution. When I Am Not a Witch won the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut, it entered the British canon. When My Father’s Shadow won the BAFTA for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Producer or Director, it entered the British canon. When Atlantics is celebrated as a landmark of French cinema’s global reach, it enters the French canon. The African critical infrastructure, which is younger and less resourced, has to argue retrospectively that these films belong to it. Thus, in years to come, these titles, similar to a rich collection of African classics, will be legally archived and owned by foreign cultural institutions.
The AMVCA controversy over My Father’s Shadow raised an authenticity challenge: is a film that was funded in Britain, post-produced in London, and submitted to the Oscars as a British film entitled to compete in a Nigerian awards show? The question seems trivial, but underneath it lies a more serious cultural conversation around what it means for Nigerian cinema’s self-image if the films that best represent it cannot be made or funded within it. Thus, as valid as the concern was, the correct object of critique should be the absence of Nigerian public film funding, the absence of co-production treaties, and a distribution system that makes domestic exhibition economically marginal.
My Father’s Shadow, I Am Not a Witch, Atlantics, Tsotsi, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, and other co-produced African titles have been exposed to the limitations of the African funding infrastructure. As African filmmakers with diaspora identities and funding continue to make internationally ambitious work, and as European institutions remain the primary source of the funding required to do so, more films will carry this dual citizenship. The question for African criticism and policy is not whether to accept or reject these films as African. It is whether the continent can build the infrastructure to eventually make the dual passport unnecessary.
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