Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Maher (she/her) makes films that center South Asian characters, intersecting documentary and creative storytelling and drawing from interdisciplinary influences including visual arts, theater, and music. Her work reflects on the precarity of memory, the function of dreams, and how intergenerational “familial alienation and trauma” shape present-day experiences. Her films include This Shaking Keeps Me Steady, about the lives of Karachi ambulance drivers; The Curfew, telling the story of a first-generation Pakistani American caring for his frail grandmother; and Theory of Colors, about a family grappling with loss. Maher was awarded the 2023 Islamic Scholarship Fund’s National Film Grant, and her films have been screened at institutions and festivals such as Switzerland’s Visions du Réel, Canada’s RIDM, and the Los Angeles Filmforum. She earned an MFA in sculpture from Yale University and a BA from Bennington College.
