One day with my father: the revelation of a filmmaker (review)

This first Nigerian feature film won a special mention from the Caméra d’Or Jury at the last Cannes Film Festival, demonstrating the talent of Akinola Davies Jr. and his ability to mix intimacy and politics.

While the children play outside, Dad looks for his watch. Autobiographically inspired, One day with my father condenses into “one particular day” (that of Nigeria’s first presidential elections in 1993 since the 1983 coup d’état) the complex relationship steeped in mystery between two brothers and their father. Although very short, the film demonstrates a rather rare density, aided by graceful editing and a tortuous reflection on the passage and dilations of time. The plastic beauty ofOne day with my father and the discreet splendor of his music complete this film into a nostalgic capsule, magnified by the filmmaker’s now adult outlook.

Nearly thirty years after the events, Akinola Davies Jr. imagine the multiple handovers, more or less failed, which took place that day: a political regeneration aborted in the first place (their father seems to support the social democratic candidate given as the winner, but who will never have the possibility of governing), and whose irregular echoes would rise to the surface of the family trio.

This day in Lagos has something outside of time, like an immediately important memory, without us being able to understand the reason. The father’s relationship to the ongoing persecutions and to politics in general is foggy (we remain at the level of a child), and a foray to the beach is transformed into an opportunity to recount his memories with his own father.

Cinema, and this film even more precisely, then become proof that something has survived and been well transmitted, despite the political repressions of the time. The adults of the time were ready for change, their children will perhaps be the first to really experience it — but in style.

By Akinola Davies Jr.. With Sope Dirisu, Chibuike Marvelous Egbo, Godwin Egbo… Duration: 1h33. Released March 25, 2026

Nicholas Moreno