Author's Biography:
MANYA GLASSMAN received her MFA in Film Directing from the NYU Tisch School of Arts in 2024. She uses visual imagery to explore love, family, mortality and what makes us human. At NYU she produced over 11 short films, directed/wrote/edited six of her own films, and produced a feature financed by one of the co-creators of Mediawan. Manya served as Spike Lee’s Teaching Assistant for four semesters and assisted him on an upcoming Netflix special. Spike Lee is Executive Producer for Manya’s short, How I Learned to Die, now being developed into a feature.
Manya’s films have won awards, including New England Best Director (2022) and Audience Pick (2021) at Flicker’s Rhode Island International Film Festival (Oscar qualifying). She also received the Spike Lee / Sandra Ifraimova Film Production Grant, Willard T.C. Johnson Fellowship, Rolly Bester Scholarship, and Antonio Cirino Memorial Scholarship, Rhode Island Foundation.
Script Synopsis:
16-year-old Iris faces a risky surgery with a 60% chance of dying; she’s gotta live it up. While chasing a wild bucket list to lose her virginity, get drunk, drive without a license, and other teenage shenanigans, she stumbles upon unexpected discoveries along the way—her aging parents’ physical and emotional fragility, a pet’s death, and an unanticipated romance.
Iris takes the viewer on a humorous and reflective journey about love, mortality, relationships, and passage from adolescence to womanhood with surprising twists along the way. In learning how to die, Iris must also learn how to live in a world where happy endings are never guaranteed.
Director's Statement:
How I Learned to Die is a feature film based on a proof-of-concept short film I completed in 2024, executive produced by Spike Lee. The screenplay emerges from my own experience; when I was 16 years old, doctors discovered a tumor inside my third vertebrae, and I faced a life-threatening surgery. Looking back, so much of survival was through humor, creativity, family and friends, and understanding the balance of teenage drama challenged by life threatening existential issues.
I want the world of How I Learned to Die to reflect coming-of-age humor and profound explorations of relationships and our mortality. To this day, I've had 18 surgeries on my neck, including a cervical spine fusion. I am incredibly blessed and thankful for the care I have received, the relationships that continue to ground me, and the opportunity to pursue storytelling that taps into the human experience.
Author's Email Address:
howilearnedtodiefilm@gmail.com