Jessica Gabriel Ujah Thrives and Survives as LADY

Lady is a strong woman in a man’s world. A taxi driver on today’s streets of Lagos, Lady makes enough money to care for herself and her grandmother while most Nigerians must choose between breakfast and lunch. When Lady’s childhood friend, Pinky, propositions her to join ranks with her boss, who’s looking for a night driver for his ladies we learn a dark secret that lurks behind the wild, large almond eyes of a woman struggling to stay independent in a ,man’s world.

Director Olive Nwosu’s exciting debut feature pulses with the potent energies and complex realities in Lagos. “Lady” radiates the love and dreams between people, the choices made to forge pathways for living through debilitating circumstances and intergenerational traumas, and the sea change of a new generation, rising to DJ Revolution’s call to decolonize their minds and take back their lives

“Lady” is not a linear ascent but a cycle — of reckoning, surrender, and renewal. It is a rallying call to unlearn inherited ways of being, to reimagine freedom as something collective. In its making, as in its story, Lady becomes an act of both personal and
communal liberation — a vision of cinema as practice, as empathy, as the space where self and community are one continuous thread.
Many of the women in LADY are new actors, but standing out in every way possibly is Jessica Gabriel’s Ujah in the title role.  She is literally the Nigerian version of Cicely Tyson, Viola Davis and Angela Bassett rolled into one amazingly gifted human being. She is a cinematic tsunami in the best way possible.

Every scene between these women was a conversation, a negotiation of truth and trust. Liberation is not only what we depict, but what we practice — in how we collaborate, who we center, and how we look at the world together. Together, we make space for something new.

Nwosu’s finger on the pulse filmmaking style is refreshing, while giving a glance of how life choices can hinder ones future or pave the way for a brand new evolution in how one’s life can be perceived.  The last scene between Pinky (Amanda Oruh) and Lady (Ujay) will make you cheer and cry at the selflessness one can have toward chosen family despite our differences.

Lady is a cinematic anthem for all women to choose themselves over and above all else, while making space for those you love to thrive and survive.