Following its premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the Special Jury Award for Acting Ensemble, Lady quickly entered the international festival conversation. Written and directed by Nigerian-British filmmaker Olive Nwosu, the film marks her feature directorial debut and builds on the thematic interests she explored in her earlier short films Troublemaker and Egungun.
Set in Lagos, Lady follows a rare female taxi driver navigating survival, ambition and emotional upheaval in a city shaped by protest, economic precarity and restless possibility. As the story unfolds, the film gradually expands beyond a portrait of one woman’s life to explore the systems that shape it: political unrest, gendered labour, migration dreams and the fragile solidarities that emerge among women trying to survive the same city.
In this interview, Olive Nwosu reflects on the film’s origins, the social realities that informed it, and the emotional architecture behind its characters. From the symbolism of Lagos itself to the complexities of agency, solidarity and freedom, the director discusses the creative decisions that shaped her debut feature.
To start, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your journey into filmmaking? And how did Lady come about?
I’m Olive Nwosu. I’m a writer and director, and Lady is my debut feature.
I’ve been in and out of film for about fifteen years now. It’s been quite a convoluted journey. I moved from Nigeria to the United States for my undergraduate degree, where I studied engineering. Because it was a liberal arts college, I was able to take classes in the arts and social sciences as well, and that’s where I took my first film class.
I had always loved watching films, but only as a pastime. That course was an introduction to film theory, and it was the first time I encountered film in a serious intellectual context. It completely blew my mind. I had never realised that films could be studied and discussed with that level of depth. I knew that kind of analysis existed for literature, because I had always read books, but I had never considered it in relation to film.
I was seventeen at the time, and I just loved it. I kept taking film classes alongside my engineering major. My school offered a few production courses as well, so I started making these like experimental, weird little videos while I was there and some documentary work.
But then that was it. I graduated. I worked in finance. I worked in advertising. I did a master’s degree in psychology. But at the back of my mind, the love for filmmaking was always there. And I was trying to write a screenplay and just honestly trying to figure out if this was a viable career and what that looks like when you’re Nigerian.
Eventually, when I was 25, I just thought you got to do what you love. You got to try at least. I left my job, moved from the UK, and applied to the MFA programme at Columbia University. And so it was very dramatic. I quit my job. I left the UK. I applied to my MFA program at Columbia. And that really was the big turning point. So I went to New York, did that for four years and just really learned the tools of filmmaking there.
Those four years in New York gave me the time and space to think deeply about what kind of films I wanted to make. I also value the years I spent away from filmmaking before that, because they gave me life experiences to draw from.
While in that programme, I made two short films, Troublemaker and Egungun (Masquerade). I also started writing the screenplay for Lady during a screenwriting class in my second year. Right after graduating, we were fortunate enough to have Film4 come on board to develop the project. And now, here we are. Lady exists.
The film opens with Lagos literally upside down. Was that visual choice meant to signal that both the city and Lady’s world are out of balance, or were you also thinking about creating a kind of psychological disorientation for the audience?
It was both.
That shot came very early in my thinking about the film. It’s very much about the upside downness of the world and Lady’s world.
It also really speaks to the subjective experience I want the audience to feel so that we are equally as imbalanced as she is. The film is highly subjective, and I wanted viewers to experience Lagos and Lady’s perspective alongside her.
One thing that stood out is how the protests are constantly present throughout the film, yet Lady’s resistance feels much more internal. In a country where protest is often the loudest form of resistance, why did you choose to explore her struggle in a quieter, more interior way?
The film really began as a character study. I wanted to investigate an interior awakening for a female character who is ambitious and in many ways so powerful, but unable and unwilling to examine her own inner demons.
Lady believes she has agency. She works hard, she earns money, and she feels proud of her independence. And slowly over the course of the film, as the protest is happening, she has to contend with the reality that there are systems bigger than her that are pressing on her life. So no matter how much money she has, no matter how hard she works, no matter how much money she saves, if Lagos doesn’t change, she’s stuck. There is a real pain in realising that you are only one small part of a much larger structure. It’s almost like you’re a small piece of the big puzzle and you have no control of the big picture.
The protests represent the larger social movement surrounding her. Lady’s journey begins as an internal struggle, but it eventually pushes her toward recognising that meaningful change requires collective action.
The ending is quite striking and, for many viewers, unexpected. Did you always imagine the story concluding that way, or did that resolution evolve as you were developing the film?
Yeah, it always felt like that’s the way it would end; around care and around love. To be honest, the relationship between Lady and Pinky is very real, and for me there was never a version of the story where Lady makes a purely individualistic choice.
This idea also connects to the Igbo concept of umu nna or communal identity. In many Nigerian communities, identity is not purely individual but collective. The Western idea of the lone hero making a decision solely for themselves is not always how our societies function.
Lady’s decision is shaped by that communal understanding of responsibility.
I also wanted to ask about Freetown. It’s a real place, but in the film it almost feels symbolic as well. How did you think about it while writing the story?
For Lady, Freetown is an ideal. It’s that psychological safe space and an imagined version of home that we all crave. Lady’s mother is from freetown as well so there’s that connection to home and to where one feels seen and safe and free so it carries that connection to origin and belonging. But Lady has never been there herself. She constructs an image of it in her mind as a place where she could be free and safe.
Freetown is also a real place as well. It was founded by freed African slaves returning from the diaspora. But like many historical dreams, its reality has been complicated.
The idea of Freetown in the film reflects a universal human longing for a place where one can feel truly at home.
Pinky’s character complicates a lot of social ideas about shame and morality. In your research, you spent time speaking with sex workers in Lagos. Were you intentionally trying to frame sex work in the film as a form of agency as well as vulnerability?
It’s complicated.
While researching the film, I spent time speaking with sex workers and spending time in Makoko and other parts of Lagos. I felt many things.
I felt that women should have more economic choices, because some women turned to sex work because they had very few economic options. Which is a very tough choice.
But I also encountered a strong sense of agency among many of them. For some, leaving restrictive family structures and living independently in Lagos offered a sense of freedom they had never experienced before.
And among them, I found a vibrant sense of freedom. There is humour, sadness, ugliness, and beauty. There’s camaraderie, a lot of love, makeup and clothes, and wanting to have a good time. But the next morning always brought the reality of the work they were doing. The precarity. The danger. Still real. The danger. So real.
Ultimately, the research reinforced the idea that women need more economic choices. Many women are forced into difficult decisions because their options are limited.
There’s also a fascinating parallel between Lady and Lagos itself. Both feel volatile, emotional, and unpredictable. Were you intentionally framing the city as something that mirrors the protagonist?
Yes, absolutely.
We had a line that I got rid of at some point, describing Lagos, as “our miserable mistress.” Because it’s true. The city carries the same emotional unpredictability as Lady herself.
Because she is a taxi driver, she spends all her time moving through the city. She absorbs its energy and thrives within that chaos.
The goal was for the audience to feel that energy alongside her. By the end of the film, it should feel as if you’ve been sitting in the car with her, travelling through Lagos and experiencing the city as she does.
The friendships between the women feel very raw and lived-in rather than sentimental. How important was it for you to centre that sense of solidarity between women as a form of survival or even liberation?
It was absolutely central to the film.
The relationships between Lady, Pinky, Sugar, and the other women are about survival as much as friendship. When systems fail people, they often rely on each other. That sisterhood becomes a form of care and protection. These women hold one another through difficult moments, even though their relationships can be complicated and messy.
Throughout the production we worked intentionally to build that emotional architecture among the actors so that the relationships would feel real on screen.
Friendships, like families, are complicated. No friendship is perfect. You can hurt each other and still love each other deeply. That complexity was important to show.
Another element that runs through the film is the voice of the radio host, DJ Revolution. His voice is present throughout the story. What role does that voice play in shaping Lady’s journey?
Lady spends much of her time driving with the radio playing, so that voice becomes part of her daily environment.
DJ Revolution represents a broader political consciousness in Lagos. His voice carries the film’s central ideas about liberation and collective awakening.
He isn’t going to change Nigeria by himself, of course. But voices like that can spark reflection. If enough people begin to question their reality, then change can begin collectively.
The idea of liberation seems to sit at the centre of the film as well. When you think about Lady’s journey, what do you feel freedom ultimately costs her?
I think Lady lets go of one idea of freedom in order to embrace another.
For much of the film she believes freedom exists somewhere else, in a place like Freetown. But over time she begins to realise that freedom might not require running away.
Through her experiences and relationships, something inside her begins to heal. That healing allows her to reconsider what freedom actually means.
There’s also that moment on the beach. Did you always see that scene as a necessary turning point for the character, something she needed to confront in order to move forward?
Again, it comes back to agency. As a child, Lady had no agency in what her mother did. So as an adult, seeing a woman in need and choosing to act becomes crucial for her, even though the situation is more complex than that. In her reality, this is what is happening.
From a psychological perspective, a person can remain stuck in a memory, frozen in trauma. Coming alive again often means being able to act, to reclaim ownership of an event or a story. Lady has to do that. And with that act comes a kind of release, one that allows her to let go of older ideas about what she wants for herself. Once something within you has healed, or a question has been answered, new possibilities begin to open up.
Finally, what are the next steps for Lady? What can audiences expect in terms of the film’s journey after Sundance?
We will continue on the festival circuit and, at some point, the film will come to cinemas. I am hopeful that everyone will come out to see it. I am especially curious about the conversations it might spark, particularly with African mothers. I would love to tell my own African mother about it and hear what she thinks. That is the conversation I am really waiting for. I suspect it will be interesting.
Through Olive Nwosu’s reflections, Lady reveals itself as more than a portrait of one woman navigating Lagos. The film becomes a meditation on agency, community and the complicated paths people take in search of freedom. By situating Lady’s personal awakening within the wider political and social realities of the city, Nwosu crafts a story that moves between the intimate and the collective.
As the film continues its festival journey and prepares for wider release, Lady invites audiences to reflect on what liberation truly means, and on the choices people make when the dreams they chase begin to change shape.
About The Author
