Malia Obama Working With Donald Glover On Directorial Debut

Malia Obama is reaching a major milestone in her TV and film career.

She will soon make her directorial debut in a Donald Glover-produced short film. The project is set to be released by Glover’s new production company, Gilga.

Gilga With Glover

Glover told GQ that the Harvard graduate’s creation will be one of Gilga’s first projects.

Obama, cut her teeth in the writers room for Glover’s recent Amazon series Swarm. He told the magazine he’s been mentoring her.

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“The first thing we did was talk about the fact that she will only get to do this once. You’re Obama’s daughter. So if you make a bad film, it will follow you around,” says Glover, underlining the importance of quality.

‘Girl Bye’

Malia is credited as the writer behind the fifth episode, titled “Girl, Bye,” which she co-wrote alongside Swarm showrunner Janine Nabers.

Nabers told ET Malia’s episode is “probably one of the wildest” of the show, and it’s all partly thanks to the former first daughter’s creativity.

“Understanding somebody like Malia’s cachet means something,” says Fam Udeorji, Glover’s longtime collaborator and creative partner at Gilga. “But we really wanted to make sure she could make what she wanted—even if it was a slow process.”

He added, “It’s more about diversity of thought than just, like, diversity for optics. You know what I mean?”

Gilgamesh?

Glover named his nascent company after Gilgamesh, the mythic Mesopotamian hero who angered the gods. “Gilga is like Erewhon for culture,” he says, referring to the high-end California supermarket. “I want to work with the best people in every medium. To work toward sustainable output. The culture we’re getting from our phones is not high quality. It can be really good sometimes. And fun. But not necessarily high quality. Gilga is the filter for all of that.”