Hailed from Shanghai, Merry May Ma is a writer/director/producer based in Los Angeles. She is a mushroom-lover dedicated to telling tactile and uplifting stories. She discovered her passion for filmmaking while studying psychology and film studies at Washington University in St. Louis. During the pandemic, she directed a documentary about Chinese international students navigating the “Zoom University Era,” which inspired her journey to the UCLA MFA Directing Program.

Her work explores the resilience of the human soul, aiming to inspire audiences to “see more, hear more, and feel more” (Sontag, 1964). Her UCLA MFA thesis film, GARDENERS, won the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant and Panavision New Filmmaker Grant. GARDENERS explores how seemingly unrelated things, like nano-science and mushrooms, are connected. Inspired by Dr. Jessica Yue Wang’s groundbreaking research in growing nanoflower-shaped tetraaniline crystals for the first time, she also celebrates the joy of discovery and the beauty of the invisible.

Beyond filmmaking, she co-founded API Film Night, the only film festival at UCLA showcasing AAPI filmmakers’ best works.