Mariam Makhieva is a documentary and narrative film director from Kabardino-Balkaria in the North Caucasus, now based in France.

Her films move between intimate human stories and larger social, scientific, and political questions. She has filmed women in the North Caucasus, disabled dancers, underground neutrino observatories, and scientists working at CERN around the Large Hadron Collider. Across her work, she is interested in people who try to understand, resist, transform, or transcend the systems around them.

She has directed 12 documentary works, including three feature-length films. Her films have received nine Best Documentary Feature awards and have been screened internationally. Her latest feature documentary, Across Dark Matter, was filmed at CERN and follows scientists searching for dark matter through the human reality of fundamental research.

Mariam combines a strong authorial voice with hands-on experience in research, writing, cinematography, and editing. She is currently developing new international character-driven documentary projects and seeking co-productions and partnerships with producers, institutions, and broadcasters who are interested in films at the intersection of science, society, identity, and human experience.

She believes in cinema as a way to reveal the beauty and complexity of reality, and to look closely at what makes us human: curiosity, vulnerability, knowledge, love, and the need to make sense of existence.

Currently developing: Igniting the Sun, a feature documentary project set around ITER and the human world of fusion research.