Pasa Faho

When Azubuike’s 12-year-old son moves in with him, the struggling shoe salesman finds himself balancing fatherhood and the slow collapse of his small shop. As the pair navigate their estrangement, the unspoken becomes a language of its own; one shaped by pride, duty, and the quiet weight of expectation. With the future of both the shop and their relationship hanging in the balance, father and son must find a way to bridge the distance between one another. This is the feature debut of Igbo- Australian filmmaker, writer and visual artist Kalu Oji.

Curators’ note:

“A tender tale into the lives of Igbo Nigerians in Australia. The film plays out through universally relatable predicaments, a business under fire, a community in flux, and a father and son’s hopes for reconnection – these connections are held through the tensions and hopes of a community finding itself within a distinct diasporic reality. The business of family becomes a way to understand intergenerational division and what it takes to sustain connections across time and location.”

In director and writer Kalu Oji’s feature debut, there is undeniable warmth and understanding of whose story he is trying to tell… As the score oscillates between high-vibration afrobeats to more melancholic, classically orchestrated music, each scene is both visually and sonically saturated with emotional cues. “Pasa Faho” is layered and lovely on every level.

Cortlyn Kelly, rogerebert.com