Malia Obama walked the red carpet at the Sundance Film Festival Thursday to promote her debut film as a writer and director, receiving mostly encouraging reviews so far.
As Vanity Fair reported, Obama’s 18-minute film was one of a number of short works being screened at the annual festival, and it was submitted under the name “Malia Ann,” a name that doesn’t immediately call attention to her connections to her father, the 44th president of the United States.
According to the Sundance website, Obama’s film, “The Heart,” is about a lonely man grieving the death of his mother after she leaves him an unusual request in her will. In Obama’s “Meet the Artist” video released ahead of the screening, the 25-year-old Harvard graduate called her film “an odd little story” that she hoped will make viewers “feel a bit less lonely” and remind them “not to forget about the people who are.”
“Malia OBAMA directed this?!” was one of the comments that popped up on Letterboxd, the social media platform for people to share their opinions on films. Someone else was pretty encouraging, though they expressed some surprise that such a strong debut could come a former first daughter. The person wrote that “The Heart” is “actually pretty amazing.”
Another person offered more extensive feedback, suggesting that the film “needed a little work, but it has the foundation for something pretty interesting.” The person also said they would have “appreciated” if Malia took a few more risks “by leaning a bit more into the magical realism” of the mother’s “unusual request.”
In her video, Obama said her film is “about lost objects and lonely people and forgiveness and regret, but I also think it works hard to uncover where tenderness and closeness can exist in these things.”
Obama’s path to filmmaking began in high school when she spent some time in the summer of 2015 assisting crew members on the set of HBO’s “Girls,” Vanity Fair also reported. She reportedly also enjoyed a similar gig on the set of Halle Berry’s science fiction drama “Extant” the previous year
Before she started at Harvard, she took a gap year to intern at the Weinstein Company in 2017 — some months before the company became embroiled in scandal over allegations that its boss, producer Harvey Weinstein, sexually harassed or abused more than 80 women over the decades. Malia Obama learned a tough lesson from working for the Weinstein Company, including not being paid for her labor, according to the company’s 2018 bankruptcy filings.
Obama has had much better luck working with Donald Glover and his production company, Gilga, according to Vanity Fair. Gilga produced the film, and Glover, the actor, writer, rapper, comedian and TV showrunner, has become a mentor.
Last April, Glover spoke to GQ about the unique challenges Obama faces because of her parents. “The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once,” he said. “You’re Obama’s daughter. So if you make a bad film, it will follow you around.”