Writer/Director Nikyatu Jusu to receive MVFF Award for feature debut ‘Nanny’ at Mill Valley Film Festival

The Mill Valley Film Festival announced today a Spotlight program celebrating Nikyatu Jusu. Jusu will be on hand for this special onstage conversation, presentation of the MVFF Award for Feature Debut, and screening of the 2022 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and her extraordinary first feature Nanny, on October 15. The 45th Mill Valley Film Festival runs October 6-16, 2022.

In this psychological 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.

Nikyatu Jusu is an independent writer, director, and Assistant Professor in Film & Video at George Mason University. Her films have played at festivals nationally and internationally. Jusu is the second black woman director and Nanny is the first horror film to win the Sundance Grand Jury Prize (US Dramatic).
 
The MVFF Spotlight program honors and celebrates exceptional work by film artists in their most current work. Honorees may be in early, mid, or late career. In previous years, MVFF has spotlighted such extraordinary talents as Regina King, Delroy Lindo, Denis Villeneuve, Robert Pattinson, Richard E. Grant, Karyn Kusama, Joel Edgerton, Amandla Stenberg, Dee Rees, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Eddie Redmayne, Ewan McGregor, Brie Larson, Steve McQueen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michelle Yeoh, Elle Fanning and Jared Leto, and more.

Joining Nikyatu Jusu on stage for a post-screening conversation will be Nanny lead Anna Diop. Senegalese-American actress Diop is known for her portrayal as Kory Anders on the DC Universe/HBO Max series Titans as well a being a series regular on The CW supernatural mystery The Messengers and the Fox thriller 24: Legacy.
 
Nanny will be released in the US theatrically on November 23 and on Prime Video globally on December 16.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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