Afia Nathaniel

Multi-hyphenate auteur, Afia Nathaniel, is one of Pakistan’s most fearless storytellers. She regularly confronts issues of gendered sexual violence through her films, fusing the personal with the political to create emotional truths grounded in lived experience.

Afia’s feature film DUKHTAR about child brides premiered at Toronto in 2014 and made her the first female South Asian director to debut with a road trip thriller. DUKHTAR went on to become Pakistan’s Oscar submission and earned critical acclaim in over 20 countries including Critics’ Pick (Village Voice) and the People Magazine’s Pick of the Week. It was labelled “exquisite” by New York Times and billed as a “gorgeous, suspenseful cinematic achievement” by LA Times.

Afia’s films have been supported by: HBO, National Geographic, Netflix, Hubert Bals, Sorfond, Tribeca Film Institute, Gotham, NYSCA and NYFA. Her latest short film DON’T BE LATE, MYRA, a survival thriller, is a searing portrait of patriarchy. It swept several festival awards and was Oscar-qualified for Best Live Action Short Film in 2025.

In 2022, Afia directed episodes of CHICAGO MED for NBC and became the first Pakistani-American female director to be hired by a US network/studio in the one-hour episodic directing format. According to Variety, “Nathaniel proves her mettle in a national industry where distaff directors are rare”.

Afia is an active member of the Directors Guild of America. She served on the jury for the DGA’s Student Awards 2026 and is one of the co-chairs of the DGA’s Disability Committee and the Eastern Diversity Steering Committee.

Afia was the inaugural Peter B. Lewis Princeton Arts Fellow and a Dean’s Fellow at Columbia University. Currently, she shares her love for storytelling with her students at Boston University. She has previously taught at: Temple, Columbia, NYU’s Tisch and Princeton.