Nia DaCosta (Female Filmmaker February pt. VIII)

Little Woods

Hedda

Hello, readers, and farewell, February. I write this final entry of Female Filmmaker February on one of the last days of this fleetingly romantic month, during what is sure to be the final gasp of cool weather in Texas until November. Forgive me if I sound mournful, but planet Earth feels as though it is in a mourning period as well. It has been a lovely distraction, though, to avoid the burgeoning Spring season and the inundation of obsessive Olympics coverage and the fall of American democracy, by watching films directed by women. We began in the 1950s with Ida Lupino, and we end in the 2020s with one of my favorite new directors: Nia DaCosta. This fellow Scorpio was born in Harlem on November 8th, 1989, to Charmaine DaCosta—a founding vocalist of the band Worl-A-Girl. Nia had dreams of being a poet, but after taking an AP English class, reading Heart of Darkness, but more importantly, watching Apocalypse Now!, she became obsessed with the art of filmmaking. She attended NYU Tisch and soon became a PA on TV sets, eventually working for and studying under the tutelage of some of her heroes like Martin Scorsese, Steve McQueen, and Steven Soderbergh. (She also worked on the music video for Kesha: My Crazy Beautiful Life.) I first became aware of Nia DaCosta after seeing her 2021 reimagining of Candyman, which left me so petrified and intrigued that I became interested in this horror franchise for the first time. DaCosta then became the fourth woman and the first black woman to direct a Marvel movie, with her 2023 film The Marvels, which was mostly despised by the typical superhero cinema crowd—though Abby Olcese of Paste Magazine wrote, “DaCosta’s assured, efficient direction” was an example of what the MCU could have been if the franchise “hadn't gotten bogged down by gloopy effects and overblown lore.” I haven’t seen The Marvels, but at the start of this year I saw her propulsive and downright inspiring film 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which is not only my favorite movie of the year so far, it is by far my favorite installment of this already pretty perfect film series. I was already a fan of DaCosta’s, but The Bone Temple cemented her status as a true artist who can make unique, clever, transcendent art, even in this shareholding, focus-grouping, franchise-forcing world of big blockbusters. In my mind (and if we’re lucky), DaCosta represents a new wave of directors who—like the female filmmakers who came before her—refuse to sacrifice their visions and their cogent messaging for the demands of boardrooms and investors. Her approach to storytelling is elegant and poignant, even, but always sufficiently entertaining. Though her resume is on the shorter side, I have only good things to say about Nia DaCosta’s career thus far, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Let’s begin with the little indie that put her on the map, a film that screened at Austin Film Festival the year I was an intern, a helluva a debut project that earned her the Nora Ephron Award for “excellence in storytelling by a female writer or director” when it premiered at Tribeca: this is her 2018 film Little Woods. An original story written and directed by the auteur of the evening, Little Woods follows Tessa Thompson as Ollie (short for Oleander), who is on probation after being caught illegally crossing the border between North Dakota and Canada with prescription drugs. Ollie has left the life of drug smuggling behind her, though she still has nightmares about getting caught. In this small, working class town, everyone is ailing from something, and it seems Ollie only got into this business to help her dying mother, and her community. Now that Ollie’s mother is gone, her probation is nearly complete, and her PO Carter (played by fallen legend Lance Reddick) believes in her enough to help her get a job out in Spokane, Ollie can step away from a life of crime, in theory. But in practice, the house she grew up in and still resides in is about to be foreclosed upon, her mess of a sister, Deb (Lily James) lives in an illegally-parked trailer with her young son, and the bills just keep piling up. This is the reality of countless Americans who cannot afford the astronomically-priced healthcare and generally-expensive cost of living that persists in the 50 states, this is why it is impossible to fathom the cruelty of the billionaires who happily hoard wealth, and why it is easy to sympathize with someone like Ollie—who is only trying to take care of herself and her family. Ollie tries to make some cash by cooking food and selling it to the various worksites around town, but it’s barely profitable. Push eventually comes to shove when Deb learns she’s pregnant, and comes to the conclusion that being pregnant and raising another child would cost far more than an abortion. After some extremely tense moments with her PO and the town’s main drug dealer, Ollie and Deb decide to kill two birds with one stone and head to Canada to do a pill run and get Deb the healthcare she needs. Little Woods is grim, suspenseful, and though it has a happy ending, impossibly bleak. But what kept me enthralled and invested in this all-too-common story was the brilliant writing and the dedicated performances. Tessa Thompson and Lily James have a believable chemistry and a believable tension as adoptive siblings, who fight and love with the same amount of fervor. Though Ollie is accused of lacking any hope, her persistence and resilience give me hope in a world full of barriers—both financial and emotional. I love a film that can expose large, universal truths with their small, intimate perspectives, and Little Woods did so with compassion and thoroughly compelling storytelling.

Far less compassionate, but perhaps even more compelling was tonight’s next film: this Nia DaCosta’s 2025 film Hedda. Based on Henrik Ibsen’s 19th century play of the same name, Hedda centers upon a raucous party, thrown by the affluent daughter of a famous general. Simply put, Hedda the character is stuck in a house and marriage that she does not want. More complexly put, Hedda the play has been recognized as a triumph of literary realism that was emblematic of the shifting perspectives in culture at the time, and it has even been described as a female variation of Hamlet. This interpretation transports us to 1950s England, where Hedda (Tessa Thompson) hovers around the hustle and bustle of servants preparing her large estate for a loud and lively event. Hedda, the boisterous bohemian, has shockingly settled down with a milquetoast academic named George Tesman (Tom Bateman), and this party will introduce them to the world. George pleads with Hedda to be on her best behavior, and to, “keep those guns out of sight”, but Hedda has a twinkle in her eye as she agrees. She changes from one spectacular dress to another, and greets each guest as they arrive, though she is on the lookout for one guest in particular—her former lover and George’s academic rival, Eileen Lovborg (Nina Hoss.) Among the eccentric crowd of George’s uptight colleagues and Hedda’s hedonistic pals is plenty of chatter and gossip, which Hedda seems to take some delight in, until she spots an unpleasantly familiar sight: a former schoolmate named Thea (Imogen Poots.) It sickens Hedda to be jealous of such a plain woman, but Thea is not only an accomplished and published writer now, she is the current muse and lover of Eileen. Hedda “assists” Thea in finding a more proper to dress to wear to the party, gaining some tea in the process, and we’re given a taste of just how sharp and brutal this party’s hostess can be. She can make you insecure with just a glare, rip you apart with a single sentence, and Thea is just one victim of Hedda’s wiles. Hedda’s calm, confident demeanor is shaken a bit when the elusive Eileen Lovborg finally appears, but Hedda is determined to maintain control of this party, of her human playthings, of the secrets she collects. The screenplay for this film, adapted and written by DaCosta, is one of the most thrilling and absorbing that I’ve experienced in awhile. It is one of those rare scripts that doesn’t need fabulous theatrics and costuming and set design to make it interesting, you could read the script like a book and I bet it would be just as engrossing (though I really did love the fabulous theatrics and costuming and set design, too.) To witness this chaotic, Machiavellian bisexual of a protagonist(?) cause merciless mayhem at her own party was exhilarating, and while I’ve never seen or read Ibsen’s original play, I would bet money that DaCosta’s interpretation is far better, and far sexier. I loved pretty much everything about this film, and it’s disappointing how little I hear it being discussed in my film nerd circles, not to mention the out-of-touch and racist Academy. Both of tonight’s wildly different films prove that Nia DaCosta is a cinematic force to be reckoned with, and I will certainly be keeping my eye on her—HOWZAT? Thank you for joining me for another month of feminine art, and beware the ides of March, which in this case, is Oscar season…🙄 Ciao!