Maryam Mir
2021 HEAR US Awardee
Maryam Mir is a writer/director and is currently pursuing her MFA in Film at Tisch. As a Canadian born in Germany, raised in Bahrain, of Kashmiri origin, Maryam has always found inspiration in stories that explore migration and movement in all its fullness as well as fractures. She is currently writing her 2nd year film, which she hopes to expand into a feature exploring the opening day of Bahrain’s first woman-only beach.
Project
Swim Girl
Growing up, every weekend, my mother would take my brother and me to the beach. Here, I felt my world was eternal: the endless stretch of moving water merging with a never ending sky.
As I grew older, this ritual continued. But at some point, I stopped swimming in the water, and I started to notice there was a difference in how boys and girls were allowed to show up, and behave, at the beach. I became conscious of my own body in the space, and the place I once found the most safety in (the ocean), became something I now stood at the edges of, longing for. And so, although I grew up surrounded by the ocean, I spent very little time in it.
This really hit home a few summers ago when I was at the beach at home. I saw a red car pull up near the road’s end and out spilled a family of 5 children: 3 boys and 2 girls racing together towards the ocean, spraying sand everywhere. As they hit the water, the boys continued on, discarding their shirts and splashing into the blue abyss, and the girls stopped at the water’s edge, backing their toes away from the lulling, frothy shore. I couldn’t get this image out of my mind.
Who were the girls? What did they long for? What does it mean to no longer feel allowed in a place you might have felt most free?
This film is an attempt to locate the precise moment when things start to change, and two sparkly, ocean-loving girls' differing struggles—to conform, and defy.
