The critical conversation around the film at Sundance was more mixed. The festival is also where Jason Blum, Blumhouse’s founder and CEO, was first captivated by the film, which he would go on to executive-produce. Jusu is just the second Black woman director, and Nanny the first horror film, to receive this honor. Shot in New York on a low budget (30 percent of which was spent on PPE), Nanny went on to win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Some of its most effective scenes home in on the indignities its protagonist suffers - arguments with and lines crossed by her privileged employers - set against the reality that she must bear them to create a better life for her son. At its best, Nanny braids a piercing domestic drama with an expansive understanding of myth. As she navigates her burdens while holding on to moments of joy as much as possible, Aisha is troubled by the wealthy white parents she works for and the creatures from West African folktales that move through her life with foreboding ease. The film, which premiered at Sundance in January, follows a young domestic worker named Aisha (Anna Diop), who is trying to bring her son, Lamine (Jahleel Kamara), to New York from Senegal. Yet the story of Nanny’s rise demonstrates that double alienation that has defined every Black artist who has inspired Jusu. It will show in select theaters November 23 and stream on Amazon December 16. Amazon and Blumhouse have thrown their weight behind her debut feature, the horror fable Nanny, promoting it at festivals from Austin and L.A. Jusu is on the verge of the kind of power that has proved elusive for Black women directors. Hearing Tate’s words, she says, as she peers at me from behind thin, gold-framed glasses, “I feel so seen.” Nineties hip-hop thrums from the speakers in the sparsely populated bistro as we discuss the power of film and the dynamics of Blackness over cups of black tea poured from a sturdy metallic pot. It’s a cool, gray October morning in Crown Heights, the kind when it seems a torrent of rain could burst forth from the sky at any moment. The black intellectual, that star-crossed figure on the American scene forever charged with explaining Black folks to white folks and with explaining Black people to themselves - often from the perspectives of a distance refracted by double alienation,” writes the late critic Greg Tate in his seminal essay about Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Flyboy in the Buttermilk.” When I read the quote to writer-director Nikyatu Jusu, we’re huddled in a corner of the French Senegalese restaurant Cafe Rue Dix, one of her favorite spots in the city.
0 kommentar(er)
