“From the start, there is a queasy energy to Jusu’s get-under-your-skin film, one made all the more unsettling to her dedication to showing a full-spectrum leading lady... caught in a surprising milieu.” Kate Erbland, IndieWire
“With NANNY, Jusu crafts a contemplative, thematically rich story that deftly explores the emotional and spiritual costs of leaving your homeland behind for an uncertain future in a strange land.” - Jourdain Searles, The Film Stage
In this psychological horror fable of displacement, Aisha (Anna Diop), a woman who recently emigrated from Senegal, is hired to care for the daughter of an affluent couple (Michelle Monaghan and 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 his arrival approaches, a violent presence begins to invade both her dreams and her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.
Anna Diop received the Rising Star Award at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival
Black Perspectives at 30: Through the Lens
Celebrating three decades of the Chicago International Film Festival’s Black Perspectives program, from Chicago filmmakers to artists working across continents, THROUGH THE LENS looks back at some of the most resonant Black stories to grace the Festival’s screens. Reaching into the vast expanse of Black imagination, the series gathers films that have made space for Black interiority, collective memory, experimentation, love, and possibility. Together, these works celebrate the extraordinary breadth of Black cinema and the generations of filmmakers who have shaped the legacy of Black Perspectives.
The Film Center is ADA accessible. This presentation will be projected without open captions. The theater is hearing-loop equipped. For accessibility requests, please email filmcenter@saic.edu