Director Milena Aboyan is a Yazidi Kurd, born in Armenia in 1992. In 2010, she started a four-year acting program in Germany. During the program, she acted in several theater productions. After graduating with a degree in acting, she changed disciplines and began to focus on writing. She started working as a theater assistant and consultant for an ARD prime-time series. In 2015, she started studying screenwriting at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. In 2019, she won the Emden Screenplay Award. ELAHA is her graduation film, made at the Filmakademie. It has already been awarded the “Kaiju Cinema Diffusion Prize” at the Locarno Film Festival.