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.
Read that again.
The first Nigerian film to make the official selection at Cannes Film Festival.
That alone should tell you everything about the level of this production.
At Cannes, it won the Special Mention for the Caméra d’Or.
The Caméra d’Or is the award given to the best debut feature at Cannes, one of the most prestigious film festivals on the planet.
Akinola Davies Jr. went on to win the British Independent Film Award for Best Director and the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Director.
The film received 12 BIFA nominations and a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding Debut.
It was also selected as the United Kingdom’s official entry for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.
On Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of critics gave it a positive review, and it holds an 85 out of 100 on Metacritic, which the site describes as universal acclaim.
This is a film that has been sitting at the very top of the global awards conversation for the better part of a year, and many Nigerians are only hearing about it because it swept the AMVCA.
That says a lot about our relationship with homegrown films that do not follow the typical Nollywood release model.
At the 12th AMVCA, My Father’s Shadow secured Best Movie, Best Director for Akinola Davies Jr.
Best Writing in a Movie for Wale Davies.
Best Score for Duval Timothy and CJ Mirra, and Best Sound Design for Pius Fatoke and CJ Mirra.
5 awards in one night.
Now let me explain why those specific categories make complete sense for this film, and why no other production in contention could have reasonably beaten it in those areas.
Best Director was always going to be a conversation about vision and execution.
My Father’s Shadow was shot on 16mm film, presenting Lagos with a textured visual style that stood out sharply from most contemporary Nollywood productions.
Shooting on 16mm is a deliberate artistic and political choice.
It is expensive, technically demanding, and carries a level of intentionality that immediately separates a filmmaker from the crowd.
The judges are looking at that kind of decision making when they evaluate a director.
Best Writing went to Wale Davies, and that too is deserved.
The screenplay drew inspiration from the Davies brothers’ own experiences after losing their father at a young age.
The story follows 2 young brothers spending a life changing day in Lagos with their estranged father against the backdrop of the 1993 election crisis.
Writing a deeply personal story and grounding it in one of the most politically significant days in Nigerian history requires a level of craft that goes far beyond putting dialogue on a page.
Best Score and Best Sound Design for a film that was already celebrated for its sonic identity at Cannes makes perfect sense.
These are categories that reward precision, originality, and how deeply the sound serves the story.
My Father’s Shadow was built from the ground up with an intentional sonic world, and the judges recognised that.
Now, none of this means To Kill a Monkey is a lesser film.
To Kill a Monkey won Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and Best Supporting Actor for Bucci Franklin, which is a strong showing in its own right.
It is a brilliant production, and 2025 was genuinely a great year for Nigerian film.
But when a film has already won at Cannes, at the BAFTAs, at the BIFAs, and at the Gotham Awards before it even enters into the AMVCA, the technical categories it competes in are very hard to take from it.
The judges are not watching with the same eyes as an entertainment audience.
They are evaluating craft, intention, and cinematic language.
And by every standard that professionals use to judge those things, My Father’s Shadow earned what it won last night.
Again special thanks to the Judges led by Veteran Actress, Joke Silva.
Benneth Nwankwo,
11th May 2026.
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