Writer-director Nikyatu Jusu has seen her class-conscious horror thriller Nanny gain historic recognition–and perhaps more importantly evoke an empathy for its title role protagonist Aisha (portrayed by Anna Diop) which translates into a heightened social consciousness of motherhood, particularly those women who are marginalized by society yet persevere and strive to attain dreams for themselves and their families.
On the history-making front, Jusu in 2022 became the second Black woman and Nanny the first horror film to win the Sundance Film Festival’s marquee U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize. (The first Black woman to earn that Sundance honor was director Chinonye Chukwu in 2019 for Clemency.)
On the strength of Nanny, Jusu went on to garner a nomination for the Film Independent Spirit’s Someone to Watch Award, and Diop became a Gotham Award nominee for Breakthrough Performer. Nanny also earned a place on the National Board of Review’s top 10 independent films list for 2022.
An official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival, the BFI London Film Festival and other stops on the fest circuit, Nanny centers on Aisha, a woman who recently emigrated from Senegal and is hired to care for the daughter of an affluent couple (Amy played by Michelle Monaghan and Adam portrayed by Morgan Spector) living in New York City. Haunted by the absence of the young son she left behind, Aisha hopes her new job will afford her the chance to bring him to the U.S. but becomes increasingly unsettled by the family’s volatile home life. As her son's arrival approaches, a violent presence begins to invade both her dreams and her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.
Aisha is part of the invisible community of women, often of color, who are taking care of other people’s kids. Yet despite being given this sacred trust, these woman are treated as if they are incidental. Little thought is given to their dreams, their families, their children. Rather than be valued, they are marginalized, in some cases even living under the threat of deportation.
It takes a village to raise a child and there’s no village for these caretakers, including Aisha who is separated from her own son. For that matter, the absence of a village–with unbridled capitalism taking priority–even affects the couple whose daughter is being cared for by Aisha. That affluent mom, Amy, is in many ways detached from her daughter even though they reside in the same house. Both Aisha and Amy are faced with balancing their own work and family lives, each needing the other in order to be able to cope, albeit not in ideal fashion, with their responsibilities.
Jusu sees Nanny as “a dark but hopeful love letter” to moms, particularly those in Aisha’s shoes, who have been systematically excluded from the so-called American dream.
The springboard for this story is Jusu’s mother whom she described as a brilliant woman needing to work beneath her ability, sacrificing for her family and aspirations. Like many immigrant women of color, the door open and most accessible to her in this country was domestic labor. Jusu’s understanding of her mom’s life imbued her horror thriller with a foundation of reality, helping viewers to connect with Aisha, who has a masters degree in English but finds herself at a station in life not commensurate with her talent and education.
Just as a society needs a sense of community to raise a child, so too does a filmmaker need community to overcome what invariably can and will go wrong, said Jusu, citing COVID as an example. You need a close-knit, caring cast and crew just to get on set.
Jusu meticulously assembled a community to help realize her vision for Nanny, noting that “all of my first choices chose me back” in terms of frontline crew. They included cinematographer Rina Yang, costume designer Charlese Antoinette Jones and production designer John Guggenheim. The latter built different worlds–perhaps most notably Aisha’s warm earth-toned apartment which is in juxtaposition to Amy and Adam’s residence which is almost antiseptic, containing clinically modern furniture. The couple’s abode features cool grays and blues, devoid of the warmth we see and feel in Aisha’s far more modest dwelling.
Similarly Yang lensed two worlds, deploying Panavision H-Series spherical lenses and ambient natural light for Aisha’s environ, contrasted with Panavision Ultra Panatar anamorphics with harsh LED lighting for the habitat of Amy and Adam.
And Jones’ costume design reflected Aisha’s native Senegal with natural fabrics and prints compared to Amy’s business world with polyester power suits.
Jusu said she was drawn to the work of Yang, Jones and Guggenheim, noting that the production designer has a deep understanding of color and the emotion it can evoke. She added that Guggenheim contributed to Mother of George, a film by a director she has great reverence for, Andrew Dosunmu.
Jusu cited Jones’ work on Judas and the Black Messiah, with costume design that reflects a cultural specificity, doing justice to different communities and how they straddle different worlds.
The writer-director was attracted to the depth and breadth of DP Yang’s color palette. Jusu said that Yang “understands how to shoot Black skin,” adding you need to be able to “see the crevices, the emotion, every nuance of facial expression, how light lands on Black faces differently.” Particularly impressive, continued Jusu, was Yang’s lensing of the feature Top Boy. “She’s not a paint-by-the-numbers cinematographer. She experiments in form. Across the board for all my department heads, I looked for people willing to experiment with form, rather than being attached to the rules we all know in structure and form.”
Jusu is gratified over the success of Nanny, her screenwriting and directing feature film debut. “I’m no longer on the outside looking in,” she said, “but the beast never looks like what you think it will look like when you see it up close. You have to continuously reassess what success looks like in this industry.” A prime goal for Jusu remains simply having “the freedom to make what I want to make.” And in the process, as with Nanny, she can shed light on the human condition, raising awareness, sparking social conscience and hopefully some semblance of social justice.
Jusu has a track record at Sundance which actually preceded Nanny. Her short vampire film Suicide by Sunlight premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Nanny itself has Sundance roots. It was selected for the 2019 Sundance Institute Creative Producing Lab as well as the 2020 Sundance Screenwriters’ and Directors’ Labs
Skip Lievsay
Among the accomplished artists glad to have been a part of Nanny is Skip Lievsay, an Oscar winner in 2014 for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. That year Lievsay had two Oscar nominations, the other for the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis. Lievsay’s earlier work with the Coens yielded three additional Oscar noms–two for True Grit in 2011 (for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing) and one in 2008 for No Country for Old Men. Lievsay’s most recent Academy Award recognition came in the form of two nominations in 2019–Best Achievement in Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing–for Cuaron’s Roma.
The contributions of Livesay’s team to Nanny include sound design that reinforces echoes of Aisha’s nightmares which creep over into her waking life. Soundscapes serve far ranging purposes from elevating horror to integrating West African themes into the film.
Lievsay, who’s a mixer, sound designer and editor at Warner Bros. Post Production Creative Services in NYC, connected with Nanny and Jusu through the Dolby Institute Fellowship which gives promising, deserving independent filmmakers access to Dolby’s tools and technologies. His work at the Warner Bros. facility and relationship with Dolby and Fellowship director Glenn Kiser translated into Lievsay getting the chance to work on Nanny.
For Lievsay the experience on Nanny opened up his perspective. “You kind of get homebound in your little world,” he observed, alluding to his long track record in Hollywood. “There are a lot of other voices outside of that box.” Being introduced to a voice like that of Jusu, he said, was a gratifying, creatively energizing experience.
This is the eighth installment of a 17-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies and on SHOOTonline.com, with select installments also in print issues. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards gala ceremony. Nominations for the 95th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, January 24, 2023. The 95th Oscars will be held on Sunday, March 12, 2023.
