On demand: "My Father's Shadow"

My Father's Shadow is a notable example of a British film that probably couldn't have been made during the Working Title era 25 years ago: the co-production arrangements wouldn't have been in place, and - for one reason or another - the key creative personnel wouldn't yet be on the books at BAFTA. Brothers Akinola and Wale Davies have come up with a 90-minute extension of what seems like a hyper-specific, often overwhelmingly vivid childhood memory. The year's 1993, and two bored and squabbling pre-teen siblings in a small Nigerian village (played by Godwin and Chibuike Marvellous Egbo) are taken on an impromptu day trip to the country's capital Lagos by their stern but loving father (Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù, from His House), keen to find some renewed way of showing some interest in his boys. The interpersonal business at first appears secondary to the logistics of the trip, and the new and strange images it imprints on the brothers: the idiosyncrasies of the grown-ups on their commuter bus, the vague chatter about an election the youngsters are too young to fully understand, the look on a local girl and a homeless boy's faces once this family unit arrives at its destination, the look on the faces of the young soldiers themselves bussed into central Lagos in a pre-emptive (and, it transpires, vain) bid to quell any electoral unrest. Watching My Father's Shadow, it becomes very clear very quickly why the moneymen handed over this budget to the Davieses: here are folks who seem to know this time and this place intimately - who may well have lived through it - and who are able to both recall and recreate them in ultra-evocative, close-up detail.

It's a transporting perspective, to say the least: that of wide-eyed kids looking out at the big city for the first time. Every shot here is a precious memory, even those that hurt. On a technical level, the film is a small triumph of production design: Pablo and Jennifer Anti (who helped style Beyoncé's Black is King) have turned the chaos of today's Lagos into a city that more readily reflects the period setting. More specifically yet - and only compounding a general sense of slippage - it's a version of 1990s Lagos that seems to have one foot stuck in the 1970s, underdeveloped in some key aspects: the theme of the day's election. If the kids - innocents snapping up the offers of free food and funfair rides - aren't old enough to see what's wrong, the father evidently can; the subtext of this daytrip is his effort to secure them a better and brighter future. The Davieses nod to one realist classic (Bicycle Thieves, in the film's questing structure) and to a more contemporary influence (Barry Jenkins' Moonlight; here as there, the pull of the ocean softens man and boys alike), yet they finally make this story their own by casting the exact right combination of people to occupy centre frame. Dìrísù keeps the father figure forbidding - we look at him as his boys do - yet he's also as vulnerable as anyone else on screen; if the brothers really do resemble brothers in both looks and attitude, that's doubtless in part because the Egbos actually are brothers, but this camera's sustained, sympathetic observation nevertheless reveals one as softer and more sensitive than the other. On my walk home from town, I started to revise the opening statement of this review: maybe My Father's Shadow could have been made at the turn of the century, but it would likely have been by a director who wouldn't have been certain of where he was going, and who wouldn't fully know what the father means when he sighs "Nigeria is hard". That version wouldn't have turned out as compelling and convincing as this - nor, I suspect, would it be this quietly beautiful.

My Father's Shadow is available to stream via MUBI from tomorrow.