Interview with Maryam Mir

A Kashmiri-Canadian, born in Germany, raised in Bahrain, with Kenyan ancestry, Maryam Mir is a multi-hyphenate—not just when it comes to her personal background, but also in her identity as a filmmaker. The NYU Tisch alum is a writer-director-producer-editor, give or take one or two, with a buoyant, rosy presence, the attitude of someone eager to get their hands on and explore every possibility filmmaking has to offer. 

Following the success of her first narrative short, Sweet Refuge, in 2022, Mir has been on a mission of discovery. Her latest project, After All This, part of the PBS documentary short series In The Making, has her taking on the role of producer, marking her first venture into documentary filmmaking. The short follows Oman-raised, Indian writer Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different, as she embarks on the journey of writing her second novel. At the same time, Mir is in post-production on her most personal project yet: Grandma Swim, a short film rooted in her childhood memories in Bahrain. 

We spoke with Mir about taking on new challenges, her filmmaking inspirations, growing up South Asian in the Gulf, and the pressures of representation. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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Eman Ibrahim: After All This is your first time producing a documentary short. What initially brought you to the project? 

Maryam Mir: After All This came about in a very surreptitious way. I played Sweet Refuge at the BlackStar Film Festival, and Andrew Nadkarni, who was the director of After All This, saw the film, and then the next day on the street, he stopped me and said, “I was at your screening for Sweet Refuge at BlackStar, I'm a documentary filmmaker. I don’t have a film playing at this festival, but here's my previous film. Can we meet up?” He's a very talented director. He has roots in India, his stories focus on women, on the diaspora, identity. And I had set an intention—I went to NYU grad film, I studied narrative filmmaking, but I really always had an interest in documentary, in terms of profiling real people, finding human stories. I was very attracted to the process of making documentary, where it's very much a process of following your curiosity, following this discovery, whereas in narrative, you kind of know what you want.

We started to work very organically, and I think the director-producer relationship in documentary is much more fluid…his style as well is very collaborative, so he really involved me in the process of brainstorming, of figuring out the narrative arc, of figuring out what textures we were going to highlight. So that's kind of how it came about from there. We've continued to work together, we're working on two additional documentary shorts right now. 

Ibrahim: That's lovely to hear, I'm glad that it was a collaborative process, which is one of the things I wanted to ask you about. In your previous work, you usually wear so many hats—you’re a writer-director, or a writer-director-editor, or writer-director-producer, you’ve done cinematography before, you've done a lot. But in this case, you're solely a producer. How different was that experience compared to the previous things that you've done? 

Mir: It was quite a learning curve in terms of understanding what my responsibilities were. I automatically assumed the position of director, because that's what I've done. And so I think a lot of it also had to do with stepping back and seeing how I'm serving Andrew's vision, and how I can be of service to that, and input my perspective and help drive towards what he wants. So that was very, um, humbling, empowering, liberating as well, because I think when you're in your own work—I also wrote and directed my first short in Bahrain last year, it’s called Grandma Swim. I'm editing it, I wrote it, I directed it, I'm finding it so much to complete because I'm so close to the material and it’s so hard for me to have distance. And so being a producer is very liberating in that sense. I was attached, but I wasn't attached in the same way, and so I could see things more clearly, I could see what we needed to complete. And so having that perspective was very helpful, and it was also helpful to have empathy, I think, for producers. They're not elevated in the same way as writer-directors, and they do so much as well.

Ibrahim: I see very clear parallels from your life to the life of Sarah Thankam Matthews: you are both South Asians who grew up in the Gulf, you both had your education in the States. So what were the ways that you brought that specific, unique perspective onto the project as a producer? 

Mir: To share that history and share that upbringing was very valuable for the project in terms of understanding Sarah, like, what was factually correct, but then, what could we lean more into? A big challenge with that project was, how do you visualize what a writer does? A lot of the other films in the series are about a dancer or a painter and a photographer, and it's very easy to see their mediums visually. So a big challenge for this was like, how do we capture the act of writing? It's such an intangible type of thing. 

A big, big unlock came when Sarah, the author—she has no videotapes of her childhood, except this one archival tape that her uncle filmed during one visit to Oman in 1998 or something, 1999. And so she discovered that one hour of tape, and that became the basis of the film. And so I think my perspective came really through [in] trying to figure out that archive as the foundation and pulling out that texture, and capturing the experience of growing up in the Gulf in that time period. Being at the beach with our family, the mountainous landscape, the way the sun feels, having that nuance and specificity around understanding the experience.

Ibrahim: Yeah, wonderful! I felt that too, because I lived in Bahrain for a short amount of time, not a long time, but it was like, a few years ago.

Mir: No way, when? 

Ibrahim: Yeah, like in 2022, so not that long ago. And I have family in Khobar. So even when I visit Saudi, we hop over to Bahrain, so I'm familiar with the Gulf.

Mir: I feel so curious what you’d think of my Grandma Swim film. 

Ibrahim: Yeah, I can't wait to see it! I'm really excited for it. But like, as an outsider looking in, you really feel that the country would not be able to stand on one leg if it wasn't for the South Asian laborers that are there. And not even blue collar workers, but my neighbors were Pakistani physicians, my doctors were Indian. And there's something that Sarah says in After All This where she is discussing growing up in Oman, driving past the South Asian construction workers, making eye contact with them and saying that it initially gave her a feeling of “deep shame.” That's a difficult emotion. I'm not saying that you feel the same way, but as a filmmaker, how has your experience as a South Asian living in a Gulf country influenced or inspired the types of stories that you want to tell?

Mir: That's such a beautiful question, thank you. I think being South Asian in the Gulf is a very unique experience. It's any marginalized people that are put on the periphery, you form a perspective in terms of being an outsider…I think one really big way it’s influenced my work, is wanting to create an archive of those stories, because as you said, South Asians make up, I mean, half the population of a lot of Gulf countries, and there's no real archive of that life. There's often an erasure or an impassibility around the cities, or we come and we live there for half a century and then we leave, and it's almost like we weren't there at all. And so I think for me, there’s life lived in that space. My family has lived there, passed there, are part of the land, literally, in some ways. And so what does it mean to put that on screen, and to show the joy? And I think there's also a class component as well; I didn't grow up working class in Bahrain, I grew up middle class, so there's a difference there. But there is something about capturing the life that unfolded, even in that kind of liminal, transitory space. 

And then I can also say, coming to the U.S., a big thing that inspired Sweet Refuge was my experience growing up in the Gulf, having that unique experience, but then coming to the U.S. and [realizing], oh, we’re two communities that maybe don't relate in Bahrain or connect as much, but here we suddenly are othered in many similar ways, as immigrants—we find new ways to connect over our nostalgia, after we left our homes. And so I thought that space felt very exciting, and that's what I wanted to show in Sweet Refuge, this relationship between an Arab man and South Asian woman, [which is] something I never saw growing up in Bahrain, but here, it felt like there was a possibility for it. 

Ibrahim: Something you said that stuck out to me, about archiving the life of South Asians and immigrants, and, of course, you're a Muslim woman—do you ever feel, and it could be external or internal, an obligation to represent the communities that you come from? Whether it's South Asians or Muslims or people of diverse backgrounds like you, do you feel that kind of pressure? 

Mir: Yes, I do definitely feel that pressure of wanting to represent them truthfully. I feel very strongly about wanting to represent our communities in their joy and their delight, in their vibrancy, because I think often our narratives are limited to trauma or to the difficult, which is not to say that that doesn't exist. It's just that there's also this other side that I feel very strongly about, showing whimsy and joy and delight and possibility, because I think we need that. 

I guess I've been thinking about this a lot, actually, right now, this external desire to represent my communities and then also internally, like, what am I attracted to? And I think just naturally, inherently, I am attracted to stories that are intercultural, that are showing unexpected dynamics between people, and it happens to be immigrants a lot of times, or it happens to be these displaced communities finding connection in each other, because I think that it's just like what my family has been through for a century. From Kenya, to Canada, and the thing that felt constant was our connection with one another. Maybe it's something internally that I'm always trying to seek, so that's where my stories end up gravitating towards, but I've also been thinking about, like, I want to also write a sci-fi film, I want to write a love story, I want to do a play—it’ll still be rooted in identity, because that's just what happens. 

[We tend] to think in terms of audience, where it's like, how does this appeal to a Western audience, or a mainstream audience? And I think I'm a bit resistant to that kind of advice or impulse because I want my stories to be universal, even if it's a brown character, Muslim character, to feel relatable. So that's where my mission goes towards: how can I make our stories for ourselves first, but then also have them be universally appealing? But it's hard. 

Ibrahim: Something that I've noticed, that I think you're very effective at, is projecting empathy and warmth into what you create. Thinking of Sweet Refuge especially, in terms of the characters and their relationships with each other, even in the filmmaking of it, the shots and the use of color, it exudes a lot of warmth. I'm assuming that's something you did intentionally. 

Mir: Yeah, thank you for saying that, that's another big word I always use, “warmth”. Because I think I want to apply that principle, not only in like the final outcome, but in the process of filmmaking, the way I write characters. It's a big thing that I grew up with. One thing I was very lucky and blessed to have is that my family often had dinner together, and I always think about the metaphor of our dinner table. Even [if] outside of dinner it was difficult, or if we had struggles with belonging, when we came together, we had a shared meal. It was the warmth of being together, and I think everything I kind of aspire to is capturing that feeling. 

So, that's one, and the other one is the beach. Like, we'd go to the beach and we'd have picnics and we'd have bonfires. So that's another thing of that experience, of being around the bonfire and having that warmth. That's very much something I want to design [into] every film, whether through color, whether through the dynamics between characters, through the costuming choices, production design. I think a lot of that actually has to do with choosing a crew and people who align with it. I'd say of my closest collaborators, they’re very warm, and they embody the films that I hope to make. I think that's a big part, bringing the right people together, who align in your values, in your vision, and then using the film as a vessel for the rest. 

Ibrahim: It does feel like a lot of the stories that you tell are inspired from your personal life, and the way you grew up, that kind of feeling that you want to emulate on screen. But outside of that, do you have other filmmaking inspirations? If you’re making a mood board, is there the work of someone that repeats multiple times?

Mir: Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox is like a reference I always come back to, like a love story that's so poetic, warm, gentle, affecting. Cherien Dabis’ Amreeka—she was actually my mentor for the Pillars Fellowship, so I was very lucky. Definitely Iranian cinema, obviously Kiarostami, but also there's a filmmaker, Marzieh Meshkini, I think she's Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s partner—she directed a film called The Day I Became a Woman, in the island of Kish in Iran. It looks very much like Bahrain, actually, and it follows three different women's lives in the course of one day, a young girl, a woman and then an older woman, and it all is connected to the beach in some way. So I feel like I draw a lot of inspiration from that film. I watch it repeatedly. 

There's a Turkish photographer Sabiha Çimen, I love her photographs. [They are] very whimsical, very delightful, very profound. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing is a big one, the colors, and the social relevance too, it's so timeless. Documentary as well, All That Breathes, an Indian documentary. A lot of documentaries that are very cinematic, using the medium of filmmaking to expand what documentary can be. 

Ibrahim: Going back to After All This, Sarah talks about artist-as-architect. In her case, she uses language to “construct the house of what holds the truth of what you're trying to say.” Maybe this is more of an existential question, but for you, Maryam the filmmaker, Maryam the artist, when you construct that house, what is the truth of what you're trying to say?

Mir: Sometimes I don't even know until I finish the film. Like, [I’m asked] a lot of times, why do you want to tell the story? What is it about? And I'm like, if you watch the film, I feel like maybe it should evoke that response. I don't know. I'm on a journey of discovering myself by exploring this thing that I can't get out of my head, where I'm like ‘oh, I just need to tell the story of this dynamic between these two people’, or ‘I just need to show this location of this beautiful beach I grew up going to that gives me this feeling that I want to capture’, and I don't have the answer of being able to put into words until the film is complete. I don't know what it is more than a feeling that I'm trying to convey. And I don't know what that feeling is, except there is a lot of emotion until I reach the end of the process. 

In the studio, they're like "Can you explain your “why” to your audience?” Which is fair. I think sometimes that can distract you from staying connected to the work, because you start to get distracted with where it will play and what the audience will be and what the distribution will be. And there is the strategic way of looking at that, but I think, if I can continue to see filmmaking as a process of like, understanding myself, understanding the world and sharing this feeling that I want to convey—I do think at the center of it all is this feeling of togetherness that I spoke about of like, belonging and togetherness, and how can I make people who leave my films feel that sense of connection? So I think that's at the heart of it.

Ibrahim: I want to talk about what you have coming up. I know you have Grandma Swim—would you like to share a word or two about that? 

Mir: Thank you. Yes, we shot it last year in Bahrain. We are currently trying to complete the film this summer and we have an amazing composer, colorist on board. We're trying to get an editor full time—I've been editing it with a co-editor, very talented editor Nay Tabbara, who's also a really incredible filmmaker, writer-director—and we're trying to complete the edit right now. So that's coming up in the summer, inshallah it’ll be finished. And then I have a few other exciting shorts coming up. I just got another grant from DFI for a short film. It's called Santa Khan. I think that Grandma Swim is very much about the coast and this is very much about the desert. It's about every winter at this local hypermarket, there's a young, Pakistani guy who dresses up as Santa and hands out gifts…his bike breaks down and he has to take a detour into the desert, and there's some surreal obstacles on his way to his Christmas Day shift, and it's a surreal exploration of a lot of dynamics that exist, but through this comedic, funny lens.

I just filmed a documentary in Atlanta, Georgia, with Andrew, we co-directed it. It follows a group of recently resettled women as they experience the American landscape for the first time, they go on their first overnight hiking trip, they're women from Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma, it’s like a very intercultural, diverse, intergenerational group of women. So we filmed that, we're editing that, and then I'm also working on hopefully a narrative feature. I'm trying to jump to more long-form work. I want to do a love story in Bahrain, between a South Asian ice cream truck driver and a Kenyan nail manicurist. The ice cream trucks in Bahrain are so cute, and a lot of them, I’ve spoken to them, come from the same village in India, the drivers. So it’s like a Kenyan and South Asian love story, of being unable to leave, but then finding connection in each other.

After All This (2025) is currently streaming on PBS. Sweet Refuge (2022) is streaming for free on Nowness Asia.