Khaula Malik is a Pakistan-born, Virginia-bred filmmaker whose work centers on trauma, womanhood and intersectional identity. Khaula got her start acting in award-winning shows for Pakistani television. Her short film How the Air Feels premiered at AFI Docs in 2017 and won the National Board of Review student grant award. That same year, she received the BAFTA New York John Grist scholarship. Khaula has served on the review committee for the Peabody Awards, the IFP Documentary Lab and the Brooklyn College Student Film Festival. She was a fellow in the 2018 Hot Springs Emerging Filmmaker program with her feature documentary The Noble Half. Most recently, Khaula was selected for the Tribeca CHANEL Through Her Lens program. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Sight & Sound and Brown Girl Magazine, as well as on CUNY TV, the educational television station of the City University of New York. Khaula is a graduate of the M.F.A. program at the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema of Brooklyn College.

Mahram — After learning that her cancer has returned, Samina, a Pakistani mother, vows to make the Hajj pilgrimage, but needs a male relative to accompany her and weighs reconciling with her estranged husband, Tariq. When those attempts go awry, the pressure of taking this spiritual journey puts weight on her trans daughter, Tahira, to consider compromising her identity to satisfy her mother’s dying wish.