The Lagos-born director of Sundance and Berlin title Lady is making elevated but audience-facing films.
Olive Nwosu says she aspires to make “a body of work that looks at the world from a modern African lens — what it is to be African in the 21st century, what it is to be a migrant, what it is to have been invisible and on the margins for a long time”.
These are the themes of Nwosu’s debut film Lady, which premiered in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition and plays in Berlin’s Panorama. “I wanted my first film to be a love letter to Lagos, where I was born and raised,” says Nwosu, who is now based in London, having studied filmmaking at New York’s Columbia University. “I wanted to centre women in Lagos and tell a story of the city from the point of view of young working women.
“It also gave me the opportunity to go back home. I’d been in and out of Lagos, and the city is becoming a metropolitan, modern city.”
Nwosu’s feature debut follows a series of short films, including 2021’s Masquerade, also set in Nigeria’s capital and selected at Sundance after a Toronto premiere. “I love the world-building element of filmmaking — inviting an audience into a space and seeing it from the inside,” says Nwosu. “Also character studies. I’m fascinated by people and curious about what makes them make the choices they do.”
Genre filmmaking is a possible path for the director. “But it has to be grounded and authentic,” she explains. “There are urgent questions I’m interested in, then figuring out how you invite an audience in.”
“There are many ways to tell a story - intimate and mythic,” says Nwosu. ”And in all these ways, we can reach for the profound. I am as inspired by Wong Kar Wai, Djibril Diop Mambety, Jane Campion and Andrea Arnold, as I am by Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson and Stanley Kubrick.
”In all these filmmakers, it is the control of their craft, and the ability to fully execute their visions that I am impressed and most inspired by.”
Nwosu has a novel adaptation in its early stages with Tessa Ross’s House Productions; and a Lagos-set dark comedy called Burial in development with BBC Film, about a Nigerian politician who invites a British strategist to the country to help him win an election.
“I would also love to work with an Element Pictures or Good Chaos,” she says. “Companies that are invested in elevated but audience-facing storytelling. In terms of actors, my process has been working primarily with non-actors and new actors. I’m intrigued by how far you can push that and lean into authentic casting.”
No comments yet