Silver Lion Winner Karimah Ashadu On Art, Resilience and Making Her U.S. Debut

In 2024, Machine Boys, a film that explores performative masculinity, premiered at the Venice Biennale, and its director, Karimah Ashadu, won the prestigious Silver Lion for a Young Participant. Set in Lagos, Nigeria, the film follows the lives of the men who ride banned motorcycle taxis, known locally as okada, for a living. “Her feminist camera lens is extraordinarily sensitive and intimate, capturing the bikers’ subcultural experience as well as their economic precarity,” the jury said about the British Nigerian artist’s work.