Berlinale 2026 : Olive Nwosu and the Politics of Truth in “Lady”

Olive Nwosu is an award-winning Lagos-born and London-based screenwriter and director. In 2019, Troublemaker, her short film featuring non-actors, became the first Igbo-language film to be featured on the Criterion Channel. Two years later, she made Egúngún (Masquerade) which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and screened at Sundance Film Festival in 2022. It received a nomination for Best British Short Film at the British Independent Film Awards (BIFA). In 2026, the writer-director made Lady which had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. 

The film competed in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition and won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting Ensemble. The film stars Jessica Gabriel’s Ujah, Amanda Oruh, Tinuade Jemiseye, Binta Ayo Mogaji, Seun Kuti, Bucci Franklin and others. Produced by Alex Polunin, John Giwa-Amu and Stella Nwimo, the film will be screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. Lady, set in Lagos, follows its titular lead, a fiercely independent female cab driver whose life is transformed when she is pulled into the orbit of a group sex workers.

In this interview with Culture Custodian, the writer-director speaks about Lady’s interiority, the film’s politics and artistic’s responsibility towards seeing and documenting truth. 

This interview has been edited for clarity. 

Lady is an archetype of Nigerians who have been conditioned to deal with complex internal and external conflict. As the writer and director of Lady, who is Lady to you? 

You’re spot on exactly that Lady is an archetype in many ways of young Nigerians, especially a young Nigerian woman who stays in Lagos and is grappling with her own interior struggles while also trying to find her own agency within a complex system that gives very little space for herself and for freedom. Lady is a young woman who has ideas of what she wants for her life despite her difficult history. Like many Nigerian women, she is looking forward, hungry and has desires. Although she wasn’t conscious of the way that Nigerian politics and economy imprison her, she still has desires. Over the course of the film, Lady starts to realize how constrained she is and how linked her internal and external liberation are. Realising this leads to the kind of awakening we saw her go through. 

Lady is articulate in its call for a political revolution. Why was this important for you and, in the Nigerian context, what do you think is the place of art in inspiring public discontent? 

I would say two things. First, as an individual, I believe in creating dangerously. The work should reflect the truth and you can’t speak about Nigeria truthfully without speaking about Nigerian politics, history and the need for change. Also, you can’t speak about young Nigerians without speaking about their circumstances. For me, there’s a real belief in community and community engagement that we need. 

Secondly, this is a heavy burden for an artist and remains one of the constructs that Nigerian and African filmmakers have been exposed and expected to shoulder.  I also want to believe that you can make art for art’s sake. Beauty and process is enough and we should be celebrating it too. Conversely, due to the urgency of our work as artists and creators, it’s to create space for real dialogue and reflection to take place with the urgency that we need. 

There’s a subtle connection in Egúngún (Masquerade) and Lady in that both the lead characters are longing for identity, place and home. Do you view these films as a continuous study of displacement and identity? And, do you think a person can ever truly find home, or is the beauty of your films found in the perpetual act of searching?

The idea of displacement is real in both films although from different angles. Personally, this is a new kind of movement for me, that a person can find home even if it’s not how they envisage it to be. To find home, they have to understand their past better and make peace with it as a close chapter that allows them to move forward. Shalewa, in Egúngún, was starting to do that when she came back home.  In Lady, by the end of the film, the titular lead has seen, processed and understood something new about herself. That created the spaces to move forward. This is the kind of  interiority of both characters. 

Politically,  Shalewa literally left home and was cornered into this in-between space as an immigrant in the UK. For Lady, she hasn’t been able to find comfort and freedom at home. Thus, in both ways, they need a place of belonging and acceptance where they can find freedom and home. 

The narrative and thematic compactness of Egúngún (Masquerade) is also present here too. Can you speak to the writing and directing of the film? And, as a filmmaker, how do you decide what to strip away to ensure the ‘core’ of the story remains potent?

Film is a complicated medium because of its compact nature. Initially, I wanted to be a writer before I wanted to be a filmmaker. The best films, I think, are very tight. They take one or two questions and deeply interrogate them. This has always been a challenge because I’m naturally inclined towards weaving several ideas into my film. Ultimately, I end up trying to reach for clarity and if it doesn’t feel like all the threads can be tightly round, then you have to erase it. 

Lady carries an internal tension, but the surrounding environment tension made it architectural too. Why was it important to build conflict into Lady’s environment (the conversation with her fellow drivers at the car park, the radio that was often tuned to DJ Revolution’s channel and the young girl hawking during the opening moments)?

Because there is an intimacy to tension – tension shows us what we will fight for, what we will say no to, what really matters to us. So in these moments of tension, we’re revealing the friction points in Lady’s life and the friction points in her Lagos. Friction around gender, the patriarchy, the system – where and how these constructs are holding Lady back. When we see our character struggle, we become more connected to her. And struggle is one of the deepest realities of Lagos social life.

The film relies heavily on the actors’ connection and the Sundance’s Special Jury Award for Acting Ensemble confirms this. Can you talk about the casting and directing process and why it was important to have actors who exude onscreen and offscreen kinship? 

I’m proud of the connection we built between the actors, and I’m proud of our Ensemble win. You know, I’m making emotionally powerful films that translate invisible lives into stories global audiences can feel, not consume. And this takes a very intentional process. I worked with my brilliant casting director, Sunkanmi Adebayo, on a process that fully centered care, authenticity and connection. From the beginning we knew we wanted to find women and actors who embodied already in their lives, one way or another, the characters I’d written on the page. We went out on the streets, to churches, to universities as well as to Lagos acting circles, to find as broad a selection of women as possible. I wanted through the selection process, to have a wide spectrum of female experiences, to speak to as many young women, and to have them speak to one another. Eventually we asked about 100 women to come in for auditions, and then we narrowed the group down to twenty. This represented a broad range of women, both actors and non-actors, women who had something powerful to say about their lived experience. 

We held a four-day workshop that I designed around creating a safe space for the women and me to connect, where we asked one another questions, did trust exercises, cried, had conversations that we don’t have enough – and, we improvised and started reading lines. Always, what was at the back of my mind was, how do young women connect? How do we hold space for one another? How do we create trust? This was the spirit in which the story was born, and what we carried throughout – including in casting. And in my direction, it’s about creating the emotional space and then stepping back to let the cast do what they do best, to connect. There’s something magical when you see that genuine flow of energy between them. It’s what I love most. You can’t fake that.

Working-class Nigerians, which this film is meant for, have been economically and systematically disenfranchised from having access to Nigerian films. Thus, what’s the Nigerian distribution plan and what are your thoughts on the possibility of a large number of Nigerians not having access to watch the film? 

That would truly break my heart, and part of my mission is for this film to get seen by everyday Nigerians. The film belongs to them as much as it belongs to anyone. We made it to be intentionally legible to a local audience, as well as a global one. I am working hard to ensure that LADY comes to local Nigerian cinemas, and we are discussing novel ways of community screenings that allow more access. Like-minded partners would be deeply appreciated.