The 25-year-old daughter of former President Barack Obama has directed a short film titled *Heart*, which premiered on January 18 at the Sundance Film Festival. She wrote the screenplay herself. In pursuit of her film career, Malia has chosen to drop the famous family name and adopted the pseudonym Malia Ann. Malia described *Heart* as “a strange little story, somewhat fairy-tale-like. It’s about a man grieving the death of his mother, who left an unusual request in her will.”
Obama’s daughter studied cinematography at Harvard University. She also worked as a writer on the Amazon Prime series *Swarm*, created by Janine Nabers and Donald Glover, which premiered in March 2023.
Despite dropping her father’s surname, some commentators on X (formerly Twitter) are skeptical about her authenticity. They also label her a “no-baby,” a term used to describe children who achieve success by leveraging their wealthy and famous parents.
Comments include: “Nepo-baby strikes again,” “Obama’s daughter is trying to sidestep the repo-baby conversation by not using her last name. Girl, you’re an Obama,” “She interned on *Girls* at 15, worked with Weinstein at 18, and then wrote for Donald Glover’s show at 24, with no authorial books to her name, and now she’s debuting her first short film at Sundance,”—read the comments. Currently, the film has a rating of 5.8 out of 10 on IMDb.
