A horror film in everybody’s mouth is Nanny, by the independent director and writer Nikyatu Jusu, making this film her feature directional debut. The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 22, 2022, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, becoming the first horror film ever to win this award at Sundance. The film was given a limited theatrical release on November 23, 2022, by Amazon Studios, and recently, the horror film was added to Amazon Prime Video, exactly on December 16. Is Nanny a watch or pass film?
The plot
Aisha (Anna Diop) is an undocumented Senegalese immigrant living in New York City, she is hired as a nanny to take care of the daughter of a wealthy Upper East Side couple. Aisha is chasing the American Dream, and she is hoping to bring her son whom she left behind in Senegal to live with her in the United States. As the story moves forward, she is forced to confront a concealed truth that threatens to shatter her precarious American Dream.
The cast
Anna Diop as Aisha, Michelle Monaghan as Amy, Sinqua Walls as Malik, Morgan Spector as Adam, Rose Decker as Rose, Leslie Uggams as Kathleen, Olamide Candide-Johnson as Mariatou, Jahleel Kamara as Lamine, Princess Adenike as Nikki, Zephani Idoko as Sallay, and Niahlah Hope as Mami Wata.
Nikyatu Jusu as a director
Nikyatu Jusu is an independent writer, director, producer, editor, and assistant professor in film and video at George Mason University. Jusu’s work center on the complexities of Black female characters and in particular displaced, immigrant women in the United States. Some of her work includes African Body Scratcher (2007), Flowers (2015), Suicide by Sunlight (2019) which are short films, and Nanny, which is a feature film. She has also been part of the Television series Two Sentence Horror Stories (2019).
Jusu has won two awards, one at the American Black Film Festival in the Short Film Award category for Flowers, and the award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Reception
Nanny received positive reviews from critics. On the web aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored 88% based on 121 critics, the majority of them being positive reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. Rotten Tomatoes consensus says “Led by Anna Diop’s strong central performance, the smartly disquieting Nanny is a promising debut for writer-director Nikyatu Jusu”.
Metacritic gave the film a score of 72% out of 100%, based on 30 critics, these indicate favorable reviews for the film.
Awards
At the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, Nanny won the Grand Jury Prize, in the “US Dramatic Competition”, becoming the first horror film to ever win the prize and Jusu the second Black female filmmaker to win it as well.
Production
In April 2021, It was confirmed that Jusu would make her directional debut with Nanny, a film she wrote and is part of the 2020 The Black List of screenplays that would not be released in theaters during that calendar year. Filming began in June 2021, in New York City.
Andrea Rich
