Master Review

“Master,” the first feature film from writer-director Mariama Diallo, brings to cinematic life an unsettling yet honest account of Diallo’s internal experiences. Told through a horror lens, “Master” follows three Black women striving to find their place in a prestigious New England college built on the site of Salem-era Gallows Hill.

Gail Bishop (Regina Hall), just instated as “Master,” a dean of students, discovers what lies behind the school’s immaculate facade; first-year student Jasmine Moore (Zoe Renee) confronts a new home that is cold and unwelcoming; and literature professor Liv Beckman (Amber Gray) collides with colleagues who question her right to belong. Navigating politics and privilege, they encounter increasingly terrifying manifestations of the school’s haunted past… and present.

Diallo modeled the fictitious Ancaster college on the school she attended. A school that once used the term “Master,” which is associated with slavery and oppression, to address the head of a college. In a Sundance Q&A with Diallo, she stated: “part of the process of writing and making this film was asking some tough questions of myself; of how I was able to sustain four years of my life where I accepted this person into my life — at the very least with that title. What did it mean and why did it happen? Why didn’t I wake up?”

Woven into the film’s various narratives are themes of invisibility, alienation and loneliness felt by three very different yet connected characters trying to figure it out. Diallo’s skillful blend of tone, mood and Kafkaesque imagery conjure visceral, emotional and psychological responses. Painful as it is to watch (insert trigger warning here), one can’t help but wonder how painful it might’ve been for Regina Hall, Zoe Renee and Amber Gray to place themselves into the roles of Gail, Jasmine and Liv. All three actors deliver captivating and palpable performances leaving it up to viewers to decide what the women are actually experiencing and what is antagonizing them.

Diallo’s storytelling deliberately focuses on the lived experience of microaggressions and inequality using history and social reality to reiterate how racism exists and operates at the core of its institutions. “It’s not ghosts, it’s not supernatural, it’s America. And it’s everywhere.”

The cinematic suspense is orchestrated skillfully through sound, close ups, objects, shadows and lighting, which all provide the right amount of tension and a well-timed relief in the third act. What may come across as an inconclusive story, due to some unresolved plot lines and unexplained mysteries, actually allows the viewer to choose what to think and believe. My takeaway, on the film’s lingering layers, was the correlation to America’s unresolved history of racism. “Master” is a compelling story driven by women and told with personal urgency.

“Master” made its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section.

Mariama Diallo is a Brooklyn-based writer-director. Previous work includes the short films Hair Wolf (Sundance 2018) and White Devil (TIFF 2021), as well as HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness. She has been featured in Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch and Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

• Director – screenwriter: Mariama Diallo

• Producers: Joshua Astrachan, Brad Becker-Parton, Andrea Roa

• Executive Producers: Regina Hall, Mariama Diallo, Sophia Lin, Terence Nance

• Director of Photography: Charlotte Hornsby

• Cast: Regina Hall, Zoe Renee, Talia Ryder, Talia Balsam, Amber Gray

• Director of photography: Charlotte Hornsby

• Production designer: Tommy Love, Meredith Lippincott

• Costume designer: Mirren Gordon-Crozier

• Editors: Jennifer Lee, Maya Maffioli

• Music: Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe

• Casting director: Jessica Daniels, Daniel Frankel

Regina Hall | Master

Nanny Review

Aisha (Anna Diop) is a captivating protagonist with a quiet force and a mighty presence — an energy instantly recognized at the start of “Nanny” when the camera zooms in on Aisha’s sleeping face (a majestic display of skin tone juxtaposed against a white background); a spider crawls on the left side of her cheek and she wakes up startled.

Aisha, an undocumented Senegalese immigrant, lands a job as a nanny of a wealthy Manhattan couple. While she easily wins the affection of their young daughter Rose (Rose Decker), she becomes a pawn in the couple’s facade of a marriage. Amy (Michelle Monaghan), the mother, is as controlling as the dad (Morgan Spector) is disillusioned and woke. Haunted by the absence of the young son she left behind in Senegal, Aisha hopes her new job will afford her the chance to bring him to the U.S. and share in the life she is piecing together. But as his arrival approaches, a supernatural presence begins to invade both her dreams and her reality.

The line of demarcation between Aisha and Amy is defined early on, but it doesn’t take long for boundaries to be challenged by the latter’s audacity and privilege. It is within this complex space that the impetus of the film becomes clear: both women are sacrificing and surviving under distinguishable circumstances.

Writer-director Nikyatu Jusu’s personal connection to the story comes alive not only in the narrative but also in the visual language. Brilliantly conveyed are the colors, textures, shadows and depth used to set the tone in Aisha’s layered world, which is diametrically opposed to Amy’s. They tell their own story, which contributes to heightening the viewer’s senses. 

Just as stunning are the supernatural-horror elements from West African folktales that help guide Aisha into herself: Anansi the Spider, a character associated with skill and wisdom who triumphs over larger and more powerful adversaries; Mami Wata (Mother Water), a water spirit depicted as a mermaid that embodies sexuality, money and fertility. The element of water is perhaps the most symbolic in “Nanny” and is eloquently utilized to sway the plot into two interconnecting thresholds: the present and past. All three play an integral role in moving the film forward.

The one reprieve from Aisha’s ambivalent reality is Malik (Sinqua Walls), the handsome and endearing doorman whose introduction alludes to a hopeful future. The two embark on a picturesque romance worthy of its own feature film (ala ‘Really Love’ by Angel Kristi Williams). Aisha’s viewpoint shifts when she meets Malik’s grandmother Kathleen (Leslie Uggams), a clairvoyant, for the first time. Kathleen offers Aisha a trio of healing teas to choose from (ginger, hibiscus, turmeric) before sensing that something is awry in her life and asks, “How do you use your rage?” “Is it your superpower or your Kryptonite?”

At the heart of “Nanny” is a story about womanhood and parenthood all of which invite introspection from marginalized characters in the lives of women with more money, resources and access. Nikyatu Jusu’s ambient feature debut sheds a vibrant and poignant light on a rarely scene perspective of undocumented immigrants who work in America to support their families back home.

“Nanny is a dark but hopeful love letter for mothers who have been systematically excluded from the American dream.” ~ Nikyatu Jasu

Writer-director Nikyatu Jusu’s short film Suicide By Sunlight, a TFI/Chanel Through Her Lens grant recipient, premiered at Sundance in 2019. Nanny, her feature debut, was selected for the 2019 IFP Project Forum, the 2020 Sundance Directors and Screenwriters Labs and Creative Capital Award, and made the Black List. Jusu is also an assistant professor teaching fiction directing and screenwriting.

• Director – screenwriter: Nikyatu Jusu

• Producer: Nikkia Moulterie, Daniela Taplin Lundberg

• Executive Producer: Ryan Heller, Sumalee Montano, Grace Lay, Rebecca Cammarata, Nikyatu Jusu

• Casting Director: Kim Coleman

• Assistant Director: Kate Branom

• Cinematographer: Rina Yang

• Production Designer: Jonathan Guggenheim

• Costume Designer: Charlese Antoinette

• Post-Production Supervisor: Isabel Henderson

• Editor: Robert Mead

• Composer: Tanerélle, Bartek Gliniak

• Principal Cast: Anna Diop, Michelle Monaghan, Sinqua Walls, Morgan Spector, Rose Decker, Leslie Uggams

Anna Diop | Nanny