A few months after making history as the first Nigerian feature film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival as an official selection, Akinola Davies’s My Father’s Shadow will be heading to the Busan Film Festival. It is the sole film from Sub-Saharan Africa screening at the popular South Korean festival.
Tunisia’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, by director Kaouther Ben Hania, is the festival’s only other African project at the festival. While Ben Hania’s film will screen at the World Cinema section, Davies’s occupies the Flash Forward, a section for first or second films by non-Asian filmmakers.
Films in the Flash Forward section are eligible for the Flash Forward Audience Award.
My Father’s Shadow follows two kids as they accompany their father on a trip to Lagos over the course of a day in 1993. Set against the backdrop of Nigeria’s presidential elections of the year, the film received widespread acclaim following its premiere in the Une Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival earlier in the year.
According to the Busan film festival schedule, MFS will have its first showing on September 21. Two more screenings follow on consecutive days.
