Ana Lily Amirpour

meet the maker of your new favorite horror flicks.

- Fiona duncan

“It’s rare to get to smoke inside of the house,” Ana Lily Amirpour says. “It might be the last time you get the chance to do that….” She invites me to light up on her sofa. It’s a flop couch, one upon which you watch movies, and the cigarette is hers—proffered from a double pack. Amirpour, who goes by Lily, is an Iranian-American filmmaker who grew up on horror flicks, like the ones she now makes herself, and skateboarding, which she calls “the best prep” for making them. For her, skate culture was about keeping up with a pack of boys, about falling—hard—and getting back up, and about viewing one’s surroundings creatively, turning cities into playgrounds. “That’s a fairy-tale thing,” she says, “which I feel like filmmaking is.” These days, Amirpour rarely skates. She’s no longer “made of rubber.” But her shoes are—tiny Crocs encasing tiny feet, proportional to her slight frame. She sits spread-legged on the couch in her West Hollywood home, talking so abundantly and honestly— on sex, drugs, and techno—that her publicist later emails me to request some amendments to her profound candor.