Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù: “If the West doesn’t say a movie is good, that doesn’t mean it’s not good” | Ṣọpẹ́ Dírìsú

WWhen Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù gets animated during conversation, his speaking voice – usually a kind of polished inner-city London accent – ​​dances with a smooth Nigerian accent. As it happened, his shoulders relaxed, his eyes smiled, and he was completely at ease. If it is true that we become the clearest version of ourselves when we are at our best, then it is clear that the core of Deris’ character is a Nigerian man.

The opportunity to strengthen his Nigerian identity was an important factor in Derris’ decision to take on his latest film, My Father’s Shadow, which was nominated for a BAFTA. The entire project — in which he serves as lead actor and executive producer — was filmed on location in Lagos, the country’s former capital, over eight weeks in early 2024. “I would have said yes if the script had been half as good,” says Derris. “When I first got it, I was excited to work in Nigeria: it was very important for me not only to work there, but also to be in the country independently as an adult. And to be able to see my grandmother more than once a year! Moreover, not many actors get to tell a story as sweet, beautiful and thoughtful as this one.”

We meet late in the morning the day after Boxing Day. Although we were both from south London, Derris had made a vague request to meet north of the river; The text message said he “needs” to be at Highbury in the early afternoon. When he arrives wearing an old Arsenal shirt from the 1990-92 era, it all makes sense. He was unable to use his season ticket recently because he temporarily moved to the East Coast of the United States to film All the Sinners Bleed, an upcoming Netflix series from director Joe Robert Cole. But now he’s in London and Arsenal are playing at home, so that’s where he should be.

Set during the 1993 Nigerian election crisis, My Father’s Shadow is inspired by the relationship its writers — brothers Will Davis and Akinola Davis Jr. (the latter directs, but the piece is co-written) — had with their late father, who died of epilepsy when they were children. The film follows Father Flaren and his young sons as they spend a day in Lagos, while political unrest threatens their journey back to their village. “On a superficial level, the film is about a father who seizes the opportunity to reconnect with his children,” Dirisu explains. “But it is [also] A work of fiction and pseudo-autobiography about grief, loss, family, fatherhood, masculinity, connection, and absence.

Although the film is about the relationship Will and Akinola have with their father, they were clear with Deris very early in the process that he was not being asked to recreate a memory. Without their father as a point of reference, he turned to his own. “It’s the way he calls my name, or the way he stands, and some of his facial expressions and mannerisms,” says Derris. “There was a real celebration of the relationship I had with him in a way that maybe I didn’t quite intend. This tenderness that I learned from him.” And discipline? “Man, yeah, I’ve been yelled at like that before!” he says. “At the end of the day we are our parents’ children. There’s a lot of him living inside of me, so when I paint my artistic skills and my actions in my life, he’s there in the most positive way. I’m grateful that I think of him as a father. “Tenderness is a word that comes up a lot.

Fatherhood regularly appears as a topic in Dìrísù’s autobiography: it is present in the 2018 Netflix horror film His House, in which he stars opposite Wunmi Mosaku. They play a refugee couple from Sudan who struggle to adapt to their new life in a small English town after the death of their young daughter. In Gangs of London – the Sky Atlantic series about the power struggle in the city’s criminal underworld – the fact that his character Elliot has a son is a prominent plot point. He didn’t say it was intentional, but he was aware of it. “As someone who is very ambitious to become a father at some point in my life, questions about this topic are constantly there.”

He says of My Father’s Shadow that he couldn’t have had the on-screen relationship with his co-stars (and real-life brothers) Chibuike Marvelous Egbo and Godwin Chiemerie Egbo without developing that dynamic off-screen as well; Teaching them how to swim (“Even though I won’t take full credit for this, they still couldn’t!”), answering questions about acting technique and keeping them out of the crew’s way — and out of harm’s way — during filming.

Deris had great insecurities about his performance. Perhaps this comes from the portrayal of a man firmly rooted in his Nigerian identity, but he is what describes him as a Nigerian from the diaspora, not from the country. His upbringing and family home were undoubtedly Nigerian, but he never lived there. The distance that comes from this circumstance is something he tries hard to close. A big part of that was learning to speak Yoruba more fluently — he took about 30 hours of lessons to prepare for the role. “Put me in an area where only Yoruba is spoken and I won’t die, I won’t starve, but I won’t run for office, you know?” He says. But it’s the most valuable gift from the experience: “If there’s one thing I’ll take away from my skill-learning career thus far, it wouldn’t be jiu-jitsu, kung-fu, or boxing — it would be the ability to connect with my ancestors.”

There has been a lot of narrative that My Father’s Shadow was the first Nigerian film to be invited to screen at the Cannes Film Festival. While it’s true that it was the first film to be selected for the festival’s official selection – it premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the event, and won a special mention for the Camera d’Or – Deris is at pains to point out that other Nigerian films have screened at the festival before My Father’s Shadow. “There is a willful amnesia of the quality of Nigerian film,” he says. “I don’t want to take away praise for the wonderful, well-done films that come out of Nigeria that are not celebrated in the West. They may not have been considered for the grand prize or any of the other awards that could be given. [at Cannes]But they were there.”

However, Derris is ambivalent about such accolades, which to him seem less like a legitimate cause for celebration and more like an indictment of an industry that has often been impenetrable to black talent seeking to tell stories about black lives. He also realizes that he allows the Western outlook to greatly influence his understanding of success. “It reminds me of when director Bong Joon Ho won the Oscar for Best Picture for Parasite, he said, ‘This is still basically just a local awards show.’ That was incredibly challenging for him to basically say if the West doesn’t say it’s good it doesn’t mean it’s not good, you know?

Dìrísù has loved absorbing the general audience response to the screenings that have been held around the world since the film’s premiere at Cannes. “I remember when I was in school, and this really influential teacher said that a play — and I extend this to any kind of performance — should be able to be experienced and enjoyed by a deaf person, or a person who doesn’t speak the language, or a blind person. The quality of the storytelling should transcend traditional barriers to entry. And those sentiments came back with our film, which is set in Yoruba, pidgin, and English and is subtitled but touches people in places like Korea. Really, really a wonderful experience.”

There are few films that Derris would say are more of a love letter to its people and places than this one. It’s an exact plural. We meet strangers for the first time who feel a warm familiarity, and the truthfully captured landscapes create a longing to return to places we have never visited: it is both representation and invitation. In interviews, director Akinola has often spoken about the Lagos of the 1980s and 1990s that he grew up in disappearing over time. Derris remembers him talking about his desire to capture and honor the mundane of that life. “There are a lot of things where nothing happens, but it’s so compelling and texturally accurate to that period and that place. If we don’t put a lens on these things, we don’t cherish them. They can be erased, they can be forgotten. Akinola wanted to crystallize the Nigeria of his childhood in memory by making this film. And I think he really did that.”

My father’s shadow is him in UK Movie theaters from February 6, distributed by MUBI.