When a Farm Goes Aflame

In 1975, Grete, a Danish woman, follows her Nigerian husband Akin back to his homeland. They go on to have three children. Due to political unrest and fear of a new civil war, they move back to Denmark in 1991. There, Akin can’t find a suitable job and returns to Nigeria. Once a year he visits his wife and children.

When the youngest son, filmmaker Jide Tom Akinleminu, makes a documentary about his father between 2010 and 2013, he discovers that Akin has a second family. Why did his father never tell his mother the truth about his life in Nigeria? And why did she never ask?

Home videos, letter excerpts, and interviews tell a layered story about a marriage breakdown, intercultural relationships, deceived children, half brothers, and lives approaching their end. All the interviewees seem to want to let the past rest—which ironically perhaps also applies to the filmmaker himself, who remains conspicuously off camera. The images and unspoken thoughts in the film reveal much more than the words.