Having garnered an MFA from NYU’s Tisch Graduate Film school, Sierra Leonean-American Writer/Director Nikyatu Jusu’s films have screened at festivals nationally and internationally garnering her NYU’s prestigious Spike Lee Fellowship Award, the Princess Grace Narrative film grant and Director’s Guild of America Honorable Mentions, to name a few.
Three of her shorts were acquired by and aired on HBO, her most recent being Flowers, which she co-wrote and co-directed. Nikyatu’s feature screenplay Free The Town was one of 12 projects invited to participate in Sundance Institute’s inaugural Diverse Writers Workshop. Additionally FTT was hand selected for Africa’s most prestigious Film Market, the 2013 Durban Film Mart and one of 5 narrative films selected for Film Independent’s Fast Track.
Presently Nikyatu is in pre-production on her narrative film Suicide By Sunlight (2018), a project funded by the production grant THROUGH HER LENSsponsored by the Tribeca Film Institute and Chanel. Her project was one of 5 to be nominated, ultimately winning the grant prize. Additionally this project was awarded a Rooftop Films/ Adrienne Shelly Foundation Short Film Grant.
Nikyatu teaches filmmaking full time, living and creating in Brooklyn, New York.
Winning Project: Suicide By Sunlight