Nia DaCosta directed Little Woods, a small drama about two sisters in North Dakota, before Candyman, which reframed the original as a story about gentrification and the erasure of a neighbourhood. The shadow-puppet sequences in it are the most formally adventurous thing in the film.
The Marvels made her the first Black woman to direct a Marvel film and the youngest director to open a number one film in the United States. Its reception was poor and the reasons were largely structural, not directorial.
Her independent work is where the actual sensibility is, and Little Woods is worth more attention than it received.
