“I think the main thing that I want to convey with any work that I do is the ability for us to have a conversation.” — Wale Davies
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
Most people know Wale Davies as Tec, one-half of the rap duo, Show Dem Camp. Davies is the Head of A&R, Africa for Sony Music Publishing. He is also known for managing Nigeria’s Grammy-winning superstar, Tems. But what many did not know until recently is that Wale Davies is a filmmaker.
In 2021, Davies’ debut short film, Lizard (2020), became the first Nigerian production to win the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. He co-wrote the short with his brother, director Akinola Davies Jr., and it was produced by Fatherland Productions, a company he founded with his brother and Funmbi Ogunbanwo.
Wale Davies’ filmmaking prowess has now come into wider appreciation with the recent international success of his debut feature, My Father’s Shadow (2025), which he wrote, with Akinola Davies Jr, as co-writer and director.
A semi-autobiographical tale set in Lagos during the tumultuous 1993 Presidential elections, My Father’s Shadow follows two boys, Remi and Akin (Marvellous Egbo and Godwin Egbo), as they spend a day with their estranged father, Folarin (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù). In our review of the film, Afrocritik described it as an “intimate tribute to fatherhood, a nation in distress, and its biggest city.”
The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, the first by a Nigerian director to be officially selected at Cannes, where it received the Caméra d’Or Special Mention for Best First Feature. Subsequently, it screened in the Centrepiece Section of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. This week, it will screen at the BFI London Film Festival as it rounds up its time in cinemas across Nigeria, where it had its global theatrical premiere. Recently, My Father’s Shadow was selected as the UK’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film category at the 98th Academy Awards.
Afrocritik caught up with Wale Davies multiple times during the Nigerian theatrical run—at a media screening, on the premiere red carpet, and in an exclusive virtual interview—to talk about the personal and political influences that shaped My Father’s Shadow, his surprising cameo, and how he is balancing music and film.
How does it feel to have written a Cannes officially selected film?
It feels great. It was a very long, hard process. I’m grateful for my brother, who co-wrote it with me and stopped me from being on Instagram when it was time to write. Being able to focus on something and achieve something is great. And I’m happy that people around the world, and also back home, will appreciate and get to see the film.
My Father’s Shadow is intimate and rooted in memory. What inspired this story?
There were a few inspirations. One of them was really just trying to, for the longest time, discover who my father was. And I think that a lot of that discovery was actually based on memory, the few memories that I had myself, but also memories that other people told me of him.
So, the full scope of what I know of him is a selection of all these memories, different things that I pieced together over time, and then became the knowledge that I have. As a child, whenever somebody would tell me a story, I would be so excited to hear the story because it added a new chapter to this thing that I’m building in my head.
The second inspiration was, there are a lot of memories that I have from childhood, especially around the time of my father passing, but there are some things that people tell me, like my mum might tell me, and I will recall them, but it feels like I’ve suppressed these memories. And with me and my brother, for the first time, really having a conversation around him, his passing, what it meant to us, I realised that even though we both share the same experience, our perspectives were different.
So, trying to extract what my own perspective has been, which in some ways has always been a search for this person, versus his own, where he was a bit indifferent because he was a lot younger, he had less time to build a bond. Also, the context of fatherhood and this continuous battle of presence versus going out there to earn money.
There are things about folklore and African spirituality that we also touched upon. How do we start to put little sprinkles of that into the work? Also, I remember June 12 growing up, and the idea [of] the collective trauma of a people that have their own dreams, their own promise, taken away from them. I also don’t think that it’s a trauma that, as Nigerians, we’ve ever really addressed. So, I think it’s a collection of all those things that went into that process.
From your perspective as the writer, what does My Father’s Shadow convey about the primary theme of fatherhood?
I think the main thing that I want to convey with any work that I do is the ability for us to have a conversation. A lot of my friends say “My dad is this hard man. When he comes home, and we see his car, we’ll start running.” And I think a lot of us do things because ‘that’s the way it’s meant to be done’. I see people who become parents and then try and change, like “Okay, I now need to be this type of person.” And I don’t think we really question.
One thing I think our generation is blessed with is the ability to overshare and have conversations. So, if we’re able to do that in our day to day experiences, I think we need to observe some of the things that we just naturally go into. I always want to be the person that allows space for questions without imposing my own beliefs. I want you to feel, I want you to think, I want you to question. And if that’s done, then my work is done.
Can you talk about how your personal experiences as a father influenced the film?
I work in music, in film, across many different things, which means that I travel or I’m away from home a lot. And so, it is this constant “How do you balance it out?” There’s a certain type of life you want your family to live. How do you afford that life? It comes with the work.
But then, the question is, are you addicted to the work? How do you find a balance? I feel it’s something a lot of people have to go through. And I think in the developing world, that reality is even more stark because it could be the difference between life and death in a lot of cases.
One of the things that inspired the film, actually, I had a situation with my security guard who came up to me one day and mentioned some problems he was having. So, he asked me for permission to go home. He had been with me for almost two years at that point and had only taken maybe three or four times off to go back to his village.
The sacrifice is such a contradiction because you’re sending so much of your earnings home, which is a great sacrifice to make, but then you haven’t gone home.
So, how does that work on your relationship with your kids, but also the relationship with [your] partner? Because it’s tough on every front. The person that is at home, the person that is away, the children that are being affected. So, for me, it’s something that I’m grappling with myself, and I’m nowhere near solving.
Brotherhood is also a cornerstone of My Father’s Shadow, both for the characters and for you as brothers working together. How did that dynamic influence the film?
I think that different perspective, even in our own discussion process, was shocking to me because I always just assumed all my siblings felt like me. But I realised that they don’t. That perspective came into the writing. I was like, this is interesting, I can develop both characters more, with one, his perspective, and another one, my perspective as well.
And even as brothers working on the project together, it’s a different kind of humility and patience for somebody to take [the] directions of their younger brother. So, even in our own real life relationship, the film taught us new things about ourselves.
Let’s circle back to African spirituality. We hear stories about people who have seen their loved ones after they passed. Why did you decide to approach the story in that way?
I think that is something that is going to be in a lot of work that I write, because I feel that the African perspective is not really considered, at least on a global level. I played this (My Father’s Shadow) in Kenya, and they got it immediately because these are things that they also have in their culture, but a different way of describing.
Two things that I wanted to really touch on. One, I was researching Akudaya, which is this concept, in Yoruba, of somebody who returns back from the dead. And [deciding] that we were going to situate the film in 1993 was perfect because before Tupac actually died, I remember them telling me “Tupac is dead”. But we had no internet, no way of confirming the news. So, it was until like three days later that we now found out Tupac was not actually dead at that time.
I even remember somebody telling me a story. Their father, during the Biafran War, was stationed in the North and walked back home. So, when things kicked off in the North, and a lot of Igbo people were dealing with the conflict, they assumed he was dead already. And like three months or four months later, [he] shows up home after they’ve finished mourning. So, that concept fascinated me, the idea that we may not have the information as immediately as we do right now.
Number two is the idea that, when I researched these Akudaya, they usually have a mission. It was interesting to me because as a father, even in the afterlife, he still assumed that his mission was to get the money for his family. But he didn’t realise that the mission was actually to spend time with his family. Playing on that concept was fascinating to me.
Again, I think that we have adopted a lot of spirituality from different places, whether it is Christianity, whether it is Islam. And for some reason, those things are less dangerous than African spirituality for us as Africans. So, exploring things in our identity, that’s what I really want to put out there in the work.
The film is set in a politically charged 1993, but 2020s Nigeria is also politically charged. How did the current landscape affect the storytelling?
I’ll be honest and say it was very direct. As far as my research goes, I don’t know about any Bonny Camp massacre. But as we were writing it, I wanted to pay homage to real moments that I’ve experienced. These moments where something happens as a collective that we don’t agree with, but then, we stand up, and we lend our voice, this same thing always happens.
The same thing happens now, in 2020, in this current era where there’s videophones, and we’re watching it, but then, we’re told it didn’t happen. It’s very directly inspired by those moments and the feeling that I felt at that time.
When I started researching and interviewing people who were involved in the June 12 protests, it just sounded like stories that I’m hearing today. Whilst we’re hoping for a future Nigeria, people are leaving, people are being born, people are dying, and nothing is really changing. My own realisation, it’s actually on us, the artistes, to start trying to position the type of Nigeria we want to see, or at least ask the questions we want to hear.
Being in the music industry, I’ve been able to travel and see how African music has influenced the perception of Africans globally. I think film has a real chance of doing the same thing. As artists, as creators, we have been blessed with an opportunity to ask questions, to start conversations, to provoke people’s minds.
Politically, how do you see the film speaking to contemporary Nigerian audiences?
The first thing is actually showing a newer generation their history. The second part is showing them that their history is not too far away from their present. I’m hopeful that it leads to some conversation.
I’m also hopeful that even the powers that be will see it and it’ll help them want to be kinder and better to their people, especially those that [were] perhaps also involved in that struggle to actualise this democracy and these dreams and hopes that we wanted. I hope that maybe it’ll remind them of how, one time, they were on this side of the fence. And that’s a naive hope, but again, I think that’s one of the things art can hopefully do.
You’ve talked about working in music, being Tec. What’s it like to work in music on one hand and film on the other?
For me, it’s just different forms of creativity. I’ve been existing in one world for a long time, but I didn’t even realise, in that world, we’re also telling stories. The things that you can’t say in a three-minute song, you can say in a ninety-something-minute movie.
How are you balancing all of it?
I genuinely don’t know. Sometimes, I’m just tired. There are some uncles that, when they used to come to my house, they would just sleep, and I used to say, “Why is he always sleeping?” But I think I’ve become that uncle that any chance I get to sleep, I take it.
But I’m grateful that I’m in a position where everything that I’m participating in, in terms of work and career, are things that I really love and I really enjoy doing. Because I feel like that’s a real privilege. I really feel like this is the path that I was meant to take.
People ask, “How do you write a film?” or “How do you manage an artist?” I just tried it. Something inside me said, “Let’s try and write a script.” And I have great people that I can send it to that they’d give me notes and feedback, but I just tried it. This script is the first thing I ever wrote. I wrote it as a short film, and I sent it to my brother. And him saying it was amazing actually gave me validation that I can write a script.
Even in managing, Tems asked me, “Will you manage me?” And I even said, “No, I’m an artist. I’m not a manager.” So, for the longest time, I’d just tell people, “I don’t manage; I just manage my friend.” It’s only recently that I’ve come to the realisation that I’m a manager. So, I just own it now. But in the past, I didn’t even look at myself as a writer. And I think this film and this process have really been affirming for me.
You tried acting, too. How did your cameo in My Father’s Shadow come about?
We casted somebody for the bridge prophet, but the person didn’t show up. We were doing workshops with the boys because they had never acted before. So, we did a lot of workshops with them and Ṣọpẹ́, and we brought them an acting coach. So, I was just sitting in on the workshop, and a call came that “We still don’t have the bridge prophet.” And somebody just joked, “Wale, why don’t you do it?” So, I said, “Yeah, I’ll try.”
When I’m writing a character, I can see the character in my mind. So, with this one, I just read the script, and they were like, “You’ve got it.” I thought they were joking at first, but they were like, “No, for real.” So, it was very interesting. I actually enjoyed it. I told my brother that I’m going to try and sneak little cameos wherever I can for myself now.
How about naming the younger brother Akinola? What inspired that?
I think it was less about naming him Akinola than me wanting to take some distance from the other character. I don’t think I was brave enough to fully put it as my story. Even My Father’s Shadow was a working title. The same thing with the character. I just said, “I’m going to write it as you, and then, we’ll see.”
And I’ve also always been fascinated by the name Remi, for a boy. I met a guy called Remi when I was growing up; I’d never met a guy called Remi before. But, yeah, I think I was just scared to put myself fully out there.
Now that the film is out in the world, what have you taken from it the most?
The most important thing is actually having people, not just Africans, I’d also say black people, recognise themselves, recognise their families, recognise their journey in the film. Things like that are very rewarding because, in trying to paint characters, I’m not trying to paint perfect characters. We’re all flawed, but there’s actually beauty in these imperfections if we know what we’re looking at.
Beyond any award, my one hope is that talented Nigerians, Africans, who have stories, it makes them feel like, “I can tell my own story, too. My own story has value, it has weight.” I don’t want us to be the one film that went into Cannes. I want it to be a signal for creators to say, “You know what, I’m even going to tell a better story.” I feel like, especially seeing it through music, we have a digital window to the world to rewrite our history, rewrite our future, rewrite our present. So, how do we take advantage of that?
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku is a writer, film critic, TV lover, and occasional storyteller writing from Lagos. She has a master’s degree in law but spends most of her time watching, reading about and discussing films and TV shows. She’s particularly concerned about what art has to say about society’s relationship with women. Connect with her on X @Nneka_Viv