"Back to selectionLady, the titular lead of Olive Nwosu's neo-noir feature debut about a taxi driver's gradual solidarity with a group of Lagosian sex workers, possesses a piercing gaze. She's not scanning you as much as she is preemptively fending you off. In her red taxi she stalks the nocturnal streets of the largest city in Nigeria, very much her own person, the only lady cab driver in a city on the verge of revolution around eradicating gasoline subsidies."
"Played with fiery commitment by Jessica Gabriel's Ujah, Lady doesn't even necessarily care that she's a "woman in a man's world," or if she lives up to any cultural norms of femininity. Those expectations are too facile. Lady has a past she carries with her like armor even as she cares for an older female neighbor or affectionately pays extra to a little girl street vendor."
Lady centers on a lone Lagos taxi driver whose piercing gaze and guarded past shape her nocturnal existence. The lead, played by Jessica Gabriel's Ujah, moves through the city with fierce independence while caring for neighbors and a child vendor. A return from a figure in her past, Pinky, pulls her into charged, intimate, and dangerous nights alongside Lagosian sex workers, prompting growing solidarity. The film favors authentic metropolitan portrayal over reductive labels like "colorful" or "vibrant." The film premiered at Sundance, won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting Ensemble, played at the 76th Berlinale, cites influences such as Jane Campion and Taxi Driver, and was informed by research with sex workers in Lagos.
Read at Filmmaker Magazine
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