written by DOUGLAS GREENWOOD
photography SKYE CASU
During the London Film Festival, the five-star Rosewood Hotel becomes a melting pot for A-listers in town to premiere their movies. Among them, on an October Friday afternoon, are two kid brothers from Lagos: Chibuike Marvellous and Godwin Egbo, aged 14 and 11 respectively. They are also movie stars—albeit much younger and, for now, less known than most of the folks they’re in the company of, but they deliver two of the year’s best performances in Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father’s Shadow.
Set in 1993 during Nigeria’s election crisis, My Father’s Shadow is an ethereal drama about something that feels simple on the surface: A day two brothers, Remi (Chibuike) and Akin (Godwin), spend with their father. But as the day unfolds, it drifts into strange, sad, and confusing territory. It’s a beautiful film about how little we know about the people who love us.
The film premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it earned a special mention for the Camera d’Or, the prize awarded to first-time filmmakers. It’s also been nominated for Best British Debut at this year’s BAFTA Film Awards.
Despite it being unusually balmy for autumn in London, the Egbo brothers weren’t prepared for how cold it would feel compared to their home city. So after landing, an assistant from MUBI, My Father’s Shadow’s distributor, took them shopping. They bound through the grandiose Rosewood doors after a morning of sightseeing with their mother, dressed head-to-toe in London merchandise. A publicist hands them a football, but it’s for a team they don’t support. They touch it as if they’re allergic to it and hand it back. The publicist shrugs.
This isn’t diva behavior, but it’s not entirely dissimilar either: The attitude of two kids who just happened to end up in one of the year’s best films, playing the sons of Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù (Slow Horses, Gangs of London), but who have no interest in fame. When they’re not making movies, the Egbo brothers want to be boys. When we take them to a nearby park for photos, they’re more invested in the game of football they’re playing with each other (they accepted the publicist’s cursed ball after all) than getting the perfect shot.
This reluctance toward attention is how all great actors begin. It was how Davies Jr. and his casting director Shaheen Baig—who recently won an Emmy for her work on Adolescence, where she discovered Owen Cooper—approached the search in the first place. “We were 99.9% sure they had to come from Lagos,” Baig tells me, “but the way I approached it was exactly the same as I would a search in the UK.”
Working with the film’s production team on the ground in Lagos, Baig and her team compiled a master list of every possible place the boys might hang out, from youth groups and schools to drama clubs and sports teams. Some applicants had acted before. Others, like Chibuike and Godwin, hadn’t. “I was watching their self-tapes, and then Akinola, the producers, and I narrowed it down. In the end there were maybe 30 kids,” Baig says. She then joined the team in Lagos to host workshops, where Chibuike and Godwin started to stand out.
“The lads just shone,” Baig says. “We didn’t know immediately that they were brothers. We only found out halfway through the recall process.” At first, Davies Jr. was nervous about casting two first-timers in such a significant roles for his debut feature, but Baig remembers telling him, “There’s some magic in these kids.” The production brought in an acting coach to build their confidence, and the Egbo brothers were cast.
Now, Davies Jr. can’t imagine the film in any other way. “They were a complete revelation,” he says. “They brought their humor, their humanity, their youthful enthusiasm. We were blessed by angels to find them.”
After kicking the ball about for a while, we took Chibuike and Godwin for cake to refuel and ask them a few questions about life and movies.
Douglas Greenwood: What was it like being on a movie set?
Chibuike: It was fun. Most of the crew were Nigerian. We got to see how hard people worked behind the scenes. Before I came to a movie set, I thought making movies would be easy, but I really learned a lot.
Godwin: There were big cameras and big lights. Everything looked strange, but later it became really fun. I really loved it.
What do you guys like doing?
Chibuike and Godwin: Playing football.
Who do you support?
Chibuike: Real Madrid.
Godwin: Barcelona.
What else do you do for fun?
Godwin: I like singing. I make music. I can play the keyboard and the drums!
What musicians do you like?
Godwin: Moses Bliss. He’s Nigerian.
What did you do when you first met Akinola?
Chibuike: He took us to a playground to play games. He was really friendly. On set, he was like a father to me.
Godwin: He looked after us. Like Chibiuke said, he was like a father to us.
Ṣọpẹ́ plays your dad in the movie. What advice did he give you?
Godwin: He was already an experienced actor, with Gangs of London and things. He gave us tips on how to act. He was teaching us.
Chibuike: He’s my father in the movie, and he really acted like a father to me. He gave me advice. He taught me a lot.
What did your acting coaches teach you?
Godwin: They taught us about emotions, positioning, and continuity.
Chibuike: There’s a sad scene in the movie, so they taught us about how to think about our own lives to feel sad.
When you went back to school after shooting, did your classmates think you were movie stars?
Chibuike: I wanted to keep it a secret, but my teacher told some of them. Now a few people know.
Godwin: My classmates don’t know about the movie.
Who do you want to be in a movie with?
Godwin: Will Smith.
Chibiuke: Idris Elba.
What’s a movie you really want to be in?
Godwin: I want to be a junior version of a superhero. Like Black Panther.
Chibuike: I want to be in the Avengers movies.
Next time we see you, you’ll be superheroes.
My Father’s Shadow is in UK and US cinemas from 6 February.