She wanted to know why My Father’s Shadow won Best Movie at the AMVCA over To Kill a Monkey.
She felt To Kill a Monkey had a better score and could not understand the judges’ decision.
I spent the next few minutes explaining something that I think many people watching the AMVCA online do not fully understand.
Scoring as seen by filmmakers and judges is very different from scoring as felt by a regular audience.
When you watch a film and the music moves you emotionally, that is a completely different evaluation from what a judge is assessing when they look at how the score was composed, how it was integrated into the film’s narrative architecture.
`And how it elevated the overall cinematic experience.
Both things can be true at the same time, you know.
To Kill a Monkey can have a score that felt more enjoyable to general audiences, and My Father’s Shadow can still win Best Score based on technical and artistic criteria that most viewers are not trained to evaluate.
That is simply how awards work when industry professionals are making the decisions.
But beyond the scoring conversation, I also noticed something else in the reactions online.
A lot of Nigerians were asking “which film is this?” when My Father’s Shadow was announced as Best Movie.
That tells me many people watching the AMVCA had never even heard of the film before that night.
My Father’s Shadow is a 2025 drama film directed by Akinola Davies Jr. in his feature length debut, from a screenplay he co-wrote with his brother Wale Davies.
The film follows a family during Nigeria’s historic 1993 presidential election and had its world premiere at the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first Nigerian film ever selected for the festival’s official selection.
