Maryam L’ange is a Tehran-born, New York–based filmmaker raised between Europe and the United States whose work is preoccupied with the inner lives of women. Her films return to women at moments of emotional fracture—haunted, desiring, disintegrating—observed through a critical feminist lens inspired by her cinematic hero, Douglas Sirk. Trained in the classical theatre, former attorney and women’s studies teacher, she began directing music videos and short films with the global production company Somesuch before creating and developing an original series at HBO. Her latest Persian-language short Rāz (The Secret), supported by The Future of Film is Female, opened with a week-long theatrical run at Metrograph before screening at MoMA. A fellow of Film at Lincoln Center’s Artists Academy, Maryam is currently in prep for her debut feature, a psychological “sunshine thriller” about two women confronting mental health across different stages of life, while developing a second feature: a witch revenge story.