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Jusu is on the verge of the kind of power that has proved elusive for Black women directors.
At its best,Nannybraids a piercing domestic drama with an expansive understanding of myth.
Jusu is just the second Black woman director, andNannythe firsthorror film, to receive this honor.
The critical conversation around the film at Sundance was more mixed.
She stirs her tea, her gold jewelry glinting in the muted light.
So now allow me to just focus on the work.
But everything comes with a price.
Moneys never free; success is never free.
When I meet Jusu, a few things are immediate.
Her tall frame is immaculately dressed in a black scarf and rust-colored jacket, her tattoo sleeve peeking out.
Her sharp gaze is accentuated with dark, delicate winged eyeliner.
She carries herself with the confidence that comes with understanding the world and ones place within it.
Jusu was born to immigrant parents from Sierra Leone in Atlantas College Park East Point.
But Jusus creative North Stars include writers like Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and Saidiya Hartman.
When you succumb to those voices, your work is not good.
In Atlanta, she attended a very white Christian high school.
The experience was weighed down by the xenophobia of her peers and teachers.
My Blackness was not the problem; the world was the problem.
She also carried the expectations of her immigrant parents.
After high school, Jusu enrolled at Duke University, planning to become a biomedical engineer.
Jusus producing partner, Nikkia Moulterie, notes how different the fledgling directors voice was from her peers.
A lot of the fresh-out-of-M.F.A.
crowd were mining their own coming-of-age well, she says.
The stories she was trying to tell were just so much more than that.
Her gaze was so far-reaching.
She was this inappropriately angry woman who was lashing out at nothing in particular.
When her classmate hosted a table read, Jusu confronted the actress playing her.
Everyone needs to work, everyone needs exposure.
Both Jusu and the young actress were climbing the ladder and being used as Black women.
Jusu stayed in the city after Tisch, eventually teaching at an arts high school in Bed-Stuy.
She left four years ago after taking an assistant-professor position in George Mason Universitys film department.
As she sees it, she couldnt have madeNannyif she had stayed in the city.
I left New York because I knew I wanted to own a home, she says.
I moved every two years for 13 years in New York.
I was so focused on survival I wasnt able to focus on my art.
Crafting a quiet life in Baltimore gave Jusu time to think about her next moves as a filmmaker.
So what defines a Nikyatu Jusu joint?
Nannys visual language is similarly bold.
Does the work acknowledge and pay tribute to the diverse beauty of Blackness?
ForNanny,its a resounding yes.
Water steeps the story in folkloric possibility.
It appears in Aishas overheated nightmares of drowning and envelops her after a devastating truth comes to light.
It becomes a vision of transformation no matter how painful, a means of rebirth.
She layers her character with a wounded interiority and strength.
Part ofNannys power stems from the collaboration by Diop and Jusu.
Shes my Daniel Kaluuya, Jusu says of Diop, reflecting on the relationship between Peele and the actor.
I get her, and she gets me.
Thats something that is built over the course of decades for some people.
She is an actors director, but shes also a cinematographers director, Diop says of Jusu.
She just possesses so much capacity in her role.
Yet Hollywood opportunities havent convinced her to leave teaching behind entirely.
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