My Father's Shadow
MUBI | Release Date: February 6, 2026 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 17 Critic Reviews
Positive:
17
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Associated PressLindsey BahrFeb 10, 2026
My Father’s Shadow is a gem, a deeply felt memory piece and vibrant portrait of Nigeria in 1993. Read full review
100
The PlaylistCarlos AguilarMay 24, 2025
It’s through the alchemy of cinema that the Davies brothers have carried out a resurrection of a soul now frozen intact on the screen. Read full review
90
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonFeb 12, 2026
It’s that sharp contrast of beauty with an undercurrent of pain that makes “My Father’s Shadow” so bittersweet, and it’s why it cuts to the quick. Read full review
90
Screen DailyWendy IdeMay 24, 2025
The child’s eye view of a seismic time of political upheaval is not an entirely new storytelling approach, but Davies breathes fresh life into the device. Read full review
90
VarietyMurtada ElfadlMay 24, 2025
As the audience is taken in by this intimate and well-observed drama, the rug gets pulled from beneath them by revealing the violence and strife that was simmering underneath. It’s a trick so devastating that it completely upends the movie, elevating it into a deeply humanist narrative. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comRobert DanielsFeb 12, 2026
This is an enchanting film. At every moment, one feels spellbound by its earnest aims and its heartwarming excursions. Read full review
88
ObserverSiddhant AdlakhaSep 25, 2025
From its gentle introduction to its jarring final scene—a lifelike anticlimax that makes sense spiritually more than logistically—My Father’s Shadow acts as both a retrospective and a soulful reconstruction, breathing life into the past while distinguishing the personal and pragmatic details that inform the complexity of a person—even one who exists entirely in memory. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubJacob OllerFeb 13, 2026
As the memory fades into history, My Father’s Shadow blurs into documentary footage, which then blurs with wishful thinking. It’s formally ambitious for such a contained film, but grants this small-scale story the well-considered gravity of something held close to the heart. Read full review
83
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 24, 2025
My Father’s Shadow resolves as a movie less about a father than it is about the absence of one — a vibrant, deeply felt love letter to Lagos, written in blood. Read full review
80
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsFeb 10, 2026
The direction by Davies Jr is top-notch, not just in how he is able to capture the fine nuances of the actors on camera, but also in how they are immersed in the chaotic mêlée of Lagos at this powder-keg moment. Read full review
80
EmpireJohn NugentFeb 9, 2026
A hugely impressive debut. Personal and political, this is a tender and spellbinding depiction of family in fraught times. Read full review
80
The New YorkerRichard BrodyFeb 6, 2026
The unusual power of “My Father’s Shadow,” for all its subjectivity, comes from its elements of impersonality—from the seemingly scriptural authority with which memory is sublimated into myths and relationships into destinies. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyFeb 4, 2026
My Father’s Shadow, which was coproduced by Element Pictures, is not a conventional political drama. Instead it quietly marries personal and national histories, offering a deceptively sprawling portrait of Lagos, a family and the fragile, frantic ways people try to hold on against tyranny. Read full review
80
TheWrapSteve PondMay 24, 2025
The action meanders, but there’s always an undercurrent of dread. And while many of the episodes are down to earth, the filmmaking lets things flow from image to image with lines that search for deeper truths but don’t advance the plot. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeMay 24, 2025
Davies Jr. deftly connects the broken promises of the nation state with the fragility of the family at the center of his story. It’s in these final scenes of this impressive debut that he displays his full promise as a filmmaker. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 24, 2025
It’s a transparently personal project and a coming-of-age film in its (traumatised) way, a moving account of how, just for one day, two young boys glimpse the real life and real history of their father who has been mostly absent for much of their lives – and how they come to love and understand him just at the moment when they come to see his flaws and his weaknesses. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineDerek SmithFeb 7, 2026
Hope and fear are inextricably bound in Akinola Davies Jr.’s semi-autobiographical film. Read full review
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