Former President Barack Obama explained why his eldest daughter Malia dropped her surname in the credits of her short film and directorial debut The Heart. The former president said she wants to carve her own path in the film industry.

“The challenge for us is letting us give them any help, at all,” Obama told Ryan Clark on The Pivot Podcast, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “They’re very sensitive about this stuff. They’re very stubborn about it. Malia, she’s making movies, so she made her first movie. And, you know, I’ll be a dad, I’ll brag a little bit…her first film went to Sundance and all these fancy film festivals, and she didn’t use Obama on as director on the credits.”

Malia used her middle name Ann instead of Obama in the hopes that juries would consider her work independently of her background.

“I was all like, ‘You do know they’ll know who you are,’” Obama added. “And she’s all like, ‘You know what? I want them to watch it that first time and not in any way have that association.’ So I think our daughters go out of their way to not try to leverage that.”

Malia presented The Heart at the Sundance Film Festival in January and at the Deauville American Film Festival in September, where she received the Young Spirit Award celebrating emerging talent.

The short film’s synopsis reads: “A lone­ly man grieves the death of his moth­er after an argu­ment about gro­ceries and an odd request in her will.”

Malia worked on the project with Donald Glover, who helped produce it. The filmmaker worked as a writer on his 2023 TV show Swarm and previously interned on the set of Girls in 2015.

Obama also shared that he asked the White House press to exclude his daughters from coverage in exchange for access. 

“They didn’t choose this, right? Let them grow up,” he said. “And to the credit of the press, they did leave them alone. Now, as they’ve gotten older, there’s been some paparazzi stuff going on, and it drives them nuts, you know, because their attitude is, ‘We’re not looking for all that.’ So they’re grounded.”