Nadira Shakur ’04

Nadira Shakur ’04 didn’t plan on having a career in the film industry; as a young girl growing up in Washington DC, she dreamed of becoming a surgeon. But while interning at a hospital as a high schooler, she fainted—her first clue that she might choose a different path. Her life instead led her down an international route—she has lived in France, the US, Brazil, the Ivory Coast and Kenya—all the while supporting African filmmakers and doing her part to broaden the image audiences have of African cinema. She co-founded the NollywoodWeek Film Festival in Paris and a film distribution company, Okada Media.

Having attended boarding school in Virginia where she lived on-campus, Shakur was drawn to the excitement of living outside the US and the independence AUP offered in a cosmopolitan city. No longer dreaming of a medical career, Shakur developed in its place a wide-ranging passion for the arts. She graduated in 2004 with BA in International Communications, focusing on film and media studies.

Paris introduced Shakur to a liberating new feeling: she found for the first time that she could be who she was without being immediately labeled. She attributes this to France’s unique connection with Black Americans due to the Harlem Renaissance, a Black arts and culture movement originating in Harlem in the 1920s, and people like Josephine Baker and James Baldwin, who made France their home. 

In 2019, Shakur and Noukoue co-created Okada Media, which distributes films from the African diaspora to platforms around the world. In the last few years, the distribution agency has expanded to include film production and a talent agency. Shakur aims to help actors hone their talent while gaining valuable career management skills. As creative producer on two projects—one is in post-production and the other is 2023’s Married to Work—Shakur collaborates with African writers, both as a co-writer and in managing diverse aspects of film production, from casting to location scouting to executive producing. 

Okada Media’s mission is to expand available opportunities for African filmmakers while removing barriers to entry. Early on, Shakur and Noukoue identified a challenge that was particularly detrimental to marginalized groups, namely that a small group of decision makers decided what gets shown around the world, often resulting in films that seemed to reiterate stereotypes, racism and negative images. Another problem filmmakers face is in distribution, where a lack of access to resources can impede a film’s success. Whereas countries like France offer subsidies to artists and Hollywood studios propel projects, Nigeria’s film industry is guerilla-based. A third challenge is the uncertainty of the film industry, given the proliferation of streaming platforms and the intensity of competition on these platforms due to content saturation.

Knowing all this, Okada Media supports creatives in myriad ways, helping them craft new narratives and images to tell their own stories, and then showing those films to the world. “When we understood the power of the image—and also the power of controlling that image, it became our main mission to find ways to do our part to broaden those images, break some of those stereotypes, and give voice to new narratives,” says Shakur. “So we started with our festival.”