Nanny: Read the script for Nikyatu Jusu’s Sundance Horror Breakout.

Editor’s note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the screenplays of films that will appear in this year’s film awards race.

When writer-director Nikyatu Jusu began hatching her first feature film take care Just less than a decade ago, she feared that the story in question would be “too unique” or “specific” to resonate widely. “Being so close to the material can be insane,” she said during an appearance at Deadlines Contenders Film: Los Angeles Awards Season Event in November.

The project was particularly “personal” to Jusu as it told the story of her mother – a Sierra Leonean native who, after moving to the US, was often forced to do jobs “that were inferior to her,” including homework.

“I’ve always been concerned about how she was treated in those households,” she said, “like my mother’s very protective child. That was the springboard.”

Debuting on Prime Video on December 16th after a limited run in theaters on November 23rd, take care follows Senegalese immigrant Aisha (Anna Diop) as she tries to make a new life for herself in New York while raising a child for a family on the Upper East Side. During this time, she must confront a hidden truth that threatens to destroy her precarious American dream.

Jusu knew from the beginning that she wanted to infuse the film with “horror elements” rather than play it like a “straightforward drama” and thus delve into something deeper. “The dark genres allow you to tell the truth in a very exciting and interesting way,” she told Deadline at Contenders, “and captivate the audience in a way that doesn’t feel preachy or pedantic.”

for Jusu, take care marked a breakthrough in her career that allowed her to land several studio roles, including an adaptation of her critically acclaimed horror film Suicide by sunlight for Monkeypaw and Universal and a Night of the living dead Sequel recently acquired by MGM. The path of her first film seemed almost sealed after her Sundance debut, where it became the first horror film to win the Grand Jury Prize, and Jusu became the second black filmmaker to win that prestigious award. Pic was acquired months later by Prime Video and Blumhouse in a $7 million deal.

Jusu also produced watch out, which recently led to her being named one of the Directors to Watch by the Palm Springs Film Festival and earned her a nomination for the Someone to Watch Award at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Read her script below.