Manya Glassman Premieres Short Film at Tribeca Film Festival

Manya Glassman attends the 2025 Tribeca Festival Awards at Racket NYC on June 12, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

Fresh off her film’s world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, Rhode Island born and raised Manya Glassman is just getting started. The Providence College and New York University graduate wrote and directed How I learned to Die, a short film about a 16-year-old girl who decides to experience all that she can after finding out that in four days she has a 60% chance of dying.

How I learned to Die, which was filmed in Rhode Island, recently had its world premiere at Tribeca Film Festival, receiving rave reviews from critics. The films story is very close to Glassman’s heart, as she took inspiration from her own experience facing the possibility of death at a young age.

“This is a story that is based on something that happened to me. I was diagnosed young with a benign tumor inside my third vertebrae, so I’ve always lived hyper aware of my own mortality and that’s something that stays with you forever,” Glassman says.

Glassman grew up in Providence, where her love of film came at an early age. Her father is a documentary film maker, and her mother is an art history professor, meaning creativity was always encouraged and flowing in her household. That creativity and love of film in her home’s atmosphere is what Glassman credits with her choosing a career in film.

“We watched movies every night, which instilled the idea that movies are a way to connect and a way to express love in a lot of ways,” says Glassman.

Always toying around with her dad’s camera since she was little meant Glassman had the perfect tool to start making short films. In middle school, she took home the Golden Chocolate Award for a movie she made, proving her talent has always been undeniable.

“I don’t think a year has gone by where I haven’t made a film. There just wasn’t ever a moment where I wanted my career to be anything else,” says Glassman on her pull to create.

Glassman directing.

After graduating from PC, Glassman applied and got into NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The grad school film program only accepts 25-30 people, making it one of the most selective film programs in the country. Through the program, Glassman struck up a relationship with Academy Award winning director, actor and screenwriter Spike Lee, who is a professor at NYU. For two years, Glassman acted as Lee’s teaching assistant while also producing over 11 short films and directing/writing 7 of her own.

Glassman and Lee’s work relationship has gone beyond the classroom, with Lee executive producing How I Learned to Die. Lee made the journey to the films premiere at Tribeca earlier this month to watch it on the big screen with Glassman.

“Sitting next to him while watching my movie that he executive produced was probably the best moment of my life,” Glassman says. “He’s such a mentor and supporter and you see so many people that he supports even after NYU. He really gives back to his students.”

The audience was laughing – and sniffling – alongside Glassman and Lee as they took in the hilariously gut-wrenching film. Total strangers approached Glassman to praise her and what she created, sharing how it touched them.

“That’s why you make movies, so you can share it with an audience and hopefully so they can connect. The reactions were just so beautiful,” Glassman says.

Glassman with Spike Lee at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of her film.

How I Learned to Die, which took Glassman seven days to shoot around Rhode Island and was funded in part by the Rhode Island Foundation, is just the beginning in telling this story. Now with her MFA in Film Directing, having received her degree in 2024, Glassman’s goal is to make a feature length film expanded from the short story. The films screenplay already has made it to the NYU Purple List, a screenplay competition for NYU students and alumni. Films chosen to be on the list are essentially the top ones that are ready to go into production.

Right now, Glassman is securing collaborators and funding for the feature, which she plans on filming in Rhode Island sometime in 2026. Despite living in New York City since 2019, Glassman loves coming home to film and show her New Yorker friends the Ocean State.

“The community in providence is so nurturing. They always want to foster a good arts community. It’s given me that yes can-do mentality which has helped so much when filming and creating in NY,” says Glassman.

To see Glassman’s film for yourself, find it screening in RI at the 2025 Rhode Island International Film Festival in August and follow her Instagram, @manyaglassman, to stay up to date with what this filmmaker does next.

Watch the trailer for How I Learned to Die here.