With Don’t Be Late, Myra, Afia Nathaniel delivers the kind of lean, breath-snatching filmmaking that reminds the industry why short-form cinema still has the power to punch above its weight. Fresh off earning its Oscar® qualification and officially entering the race for the 98th Academy Awards®, the film cements Nathaniel returning to Pakistani storytelling after her acclaimed feature Dukhtar, as one of the most uncompromising voices working today.

Set in the bustling, unvarnished chaos of Lahore’s streets, the film tracks 10-year-old Myra (a quietly phenomenal Innayah Umer), who finds herself walking home alone after missing her school van. What begins as an ordinary inconvenience quickly escalates into a white-knuckled journey of threat, surveillance, and gendered peril. Nathaniel orchestrates the tension with surgical precision: the pacing is urgent yet never sensationalistic, the filmmaking intimate yet rooted in a wider cultural critique. Every glance and footstep carries the thrum of danger.

Beneath its thriller architecture, Don’t Be Late, Myra operates as a stark exposé of the harassment children routinely navigate in public spaces, which is an issue rarely addressed with such clarity and restraint. Drawing from her own lived experience as a survivor, Nathaniel transforms personal trauma into cinematic urgency, refusing to let the silence around child harassment remain intact. It’s this fusion of the personal and the political that gives the film its extraordinary emotional voltage.

Festival juries and audiences worldwide have already taken notice. The film’s streak; Best Film at Bergen International Film Festival of NJ, Best Short Film at Montreal, the UK Asian Film Festival’s Best Long Short (Flame Award), plus audience recognition at WOW Wales One World Film Festival signals a work resonating far beyond regional borders. Add wins at Big Apple, California Women’s, and DC Independent Film Festival, and the momentum feels nothing short of formidable.

Shot entirely on location with a local cast and crew, the film finds its heartbeat in authenticity. Lahore isn’t a backdrop, it’s a living organism, amplifying both the immediacy of Myra’s journey and the systemic vulnerabilities it exposes.

Nathaniel has long been a filmmaker to watch Dukhtar’s global acclaim and her historic directing work on Chicago Med solidified that, but Don’t Be Late, Myra represents a new creative peak. It’s bold yet restrained, urgent yet humane, socially fearless yet cinematically exacting.

In joining the 98th Academy Awards® race, the film stands as a potent reminder: cinema can confront taboo, challenge patriarchal silence, and spark cultural reckoning all within the compressed power of a short. Nathaniel hasn’t just made a film; she’s issued a call to attention. And Hollywood is listening.

Five stars.

Alison Brenner