My Father's Shadow (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Duval Timothy

February 6, 2026

Classical / Film Score

Carrying Colour releases the official soundtrack to My Father’s Shadow, composed by Duval Timothy and CJ Mirra. Duval and CJ craft a score of striking emotional depth — tender, transcendent and texturally rich. Centring Timothy’s piano and a palette of analogue studio devices, the music evokes the film’s period, its turbulence, its grief and its fleeting moments of joy. Across 12 tracks, the soundtrack stands as both a fully realised album and an integral narrative voice within the film. Set over a single day in Lagos during the 1993 Nigerian election crisis, My Father’s Shadow follows an estranged father guiding his two young sons across the city as political unrest threatens their journey home. The film premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2025 — the first Nigerian production ever selected for the official selection — where it received the Special Mention Caméra d’Or. It went on to earn 12 British Independent Film Award nominations, including Best Score for Duval and CJ, Best Sound for CJ, and Best Director for Akinola Davies Jr., alongside multiple wins at The Gothams and festivals worldwide. The film is the UK’s submission for Best International Feature Film at the 2026 Oscars and will be released in UK cinemas on 6 February 2026. Work on the music began at script stage: Duval composed early sketches in his Freetown studio and captured field recordings while visiting the set in Ibadan. He and CJ later developed the score to picture between Duval’s home studio and CJ’s London workspace. The piano forms the emotional core of the soundtrack — played traditionally, felted, prepared with objects on the strings, and even used percussively, struck with mallets or strummed with tuning forks. These recordings were processed through vintage tape delays, early digital units and analogue gear to create a sonic world that mirrors the film’s era, atmosphere and 16mm film texture. Shot largely from the perspective of the children Remi and Akin (played by brothers Chibuike Marvellous Egbo and Godwin Egbo), the score draws on a child’s sense of scale and wonder. “Journey to Lagos” captures their first encounter with the vast city, while “Coup pt.2” sees the piano unravel as their father Folarin (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) desperately clings to fleeting moments with his boys. Tom Herbert’s warm, plucked double bass underscores their fragile connection. Vocalist Roxanne Tataei appears throughout the score — from the eerie, operatic invocation of “Incantation” to the propulsive, Makeba-esque staccato of “Coup pt.1”. Her voice becomes a thematic signature, invoking the presence of the boys’ mother (Winifred Efon). At the soundtrack’s emotional centre, “Horses” offers a luminous portrait of Lagos: Timothy’s wandering left-hand piano and Elijah Olawiyola’s talking drums give Folarin and his sons a moment of majesty as they ride an okada past the National Theatre — before the drums fragment, reminding us how often things fall apart.