Akinola Davies Jr. On “My Father’s Shadow”, Making History At Cannes, And His 2025 BAFTA Breakthrough

Lovely to meet you and congratulations. My Father’s Shadow is your debut feature film, but you’ve got such a diverse body of work; does winning the BAFTA Breakthrough feel like it’s been a long time coming?

Akinola Davies Jr: Yeah, initially, no. I got into film because a friend of mine’s dad was an editor, and I really liked their family life. I thought they were bohemian. I’d never seen people like that before, and I thought, “Oh, their dad’s an editor, mum’s an artist, it’s very cool.” I wanted to do that. I worked in production design, editing, and camerawork. But everyone kept saying, “You’re probably a director.” Once I became brave enough to pursue it, it became about wanting to make a feature, but not wanting to jinx myself by saying it out loud. It’s been a long road. It’s been 15 years, and now I feel like I’ve reached the dream. It’s now about trying to maximise that dream as much as possible.

You spent a long time directing music videos and working with fashion brands before moving into film. It’s such a big step into such a competitive industry – was there a specific moment where you had to be brave, like a do-or-die moment?

Yeah, completely. Quite a few moments, but the main one was when I assisted photographers and filmmakers Tim and Barry. We used to shoot a lot of stuff online with grime music, and it really introduced me to my network. They were like my creative filmmaking dads. I worked with them for six years, and towards the end, I got more pushy, saying, “We should do this and that.” And they said, “Maybe you should do those things.”

It was them gently firing me, and I was heartbroken, if I’m honest. But I’m the kind of person who uses disappointment as motivation to prove people wrong – and to prove myself wrong as well. It was tough, and it took a year or two to figure out what I was trying to do. Eventually, I made a film, and that was when I thought, “Okay, you actually can do this, and it might work.” But yeah, it came from disappointment.