Ana Lily Amirpour (Persian: آنا لیلی امیرپور) is an American filmmaker of Iranian descent. She is best known for her feature film debut A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, promoted as "the first Iranian vampire western," which made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, and which was based on a previous short film that she wrote and directed, which won Best Short Film at the 2012 Noor Iranian Film Festival.

Amirpour was born in Margate, England to Iranian parents. She was born partially deaf. Her family moved to Miami, Florida when she was young. Her family then settled in Bakersfield, California, where she attended high school. She began studying biology at UC Santa Barbara but dropped out after one year. Later she returned to school to study painting and sculpting, attending San Francisco State University for her undergraduate degree, and then studied screenwriting at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. She has been making films since she was twelve years old.

Amirpour's love for film came about when she moved to the United States with her family in the 1980s. She speaks often about the culture shock she experienced and her connection with American films. "I got hooked on them. It's how I assimilated and became American through American pop culture and music—Madonna, Michael Jackson. And movies. I was always putting on shows and stuff. My dad got a camcorder when I was 12 and I started making films and imitating commercials. Like, I would remake commercials. I wasn't like; I'm going to be a filmmaker. My parents never encouraged that; I don't know how they would have. Iranians don't do that."

Amirpour's feature directorial debut was A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, described as "the first Iranian vampire western" "with elements of film noir and the restraint of Iranian New Wave cinema" along with spaghetti Western elements. It stars Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh, Dominic Rains, Mozhan Marnò, and Rome Shadanloo. The film built up significant buzz when it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, eventually being picked up by Kino Lorber and distributed by VICE films. The film also won the "Revelations Prize" at the 2014 Deauville Film Festival and the Carnet Jove Jury Award, as well as the Citizen Kane Award for Best Directorial Revelation from the Sitges Film Festival. The film was also nominated for the Halekulani Golden Orchid Award at the Hawaii International Film Festival.

At the film's premiere, VICE Creative Director Eddy Moretti, whose company released the film, called Amirpour "the next Tarantino". The New York Times's A.O. Scott also remarked that the film had a "Jim Jarmusch-like cool" and a "disarmingly innocent outlaw romanticism." In the wake of the film's release, Filmmaker named her to their 2014 list of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film.

Amirpour's debut film underscores her interstitial identity as an Iranian-American through its landscape and language. Wide shots featuring the monotonous, dipping movement of dark, heavy machinery against an industrial backdrop in A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night can bring to mind either "an American suburban neighborhood" or "the oil fields of Iran." The film's language offers layered meanings for both an Iranian and American audience. For instance, an English-speaking audience may call the fictional town of the film "Bad City," whereas an Iranian audience may interpret it as "Wind City," depending on the particular audience's understanding of an English subtitle-based or Persian-based reading of Arash's license plate.

Amirpour described her second film, an English-language film entitled The Bad Batch as "a post-apocalyptic cannibal love story set in a Texas wasteland" where a "muscled cannibal breaks the rule 'don't play with your food'" – "It's Road Warrior meets Pretty in Pink with a dope soundtrack." She has also described it as "very violent" and "very romantic" and like "El Topo meets Dirty Dancing". The film stars Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Jim Carrey, and Keanu Reeves. It premiered at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival on September 6, 2016, and won the Special Jury prize.

Amirpour's third feature film is Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, starring Jun Jong-seo and Kate Hudson. The movie is described as "a mind-bending adventure set in the humid, neon-lit streets of New Orleans. Inspired by adventure films of the 1980s and '90s, the film follows a young girl with special abilities. After escaping from an asylum, she returns to the chaotic reality around her, making unexpected allies along the way." It was filmed in New Orleans in summer 2019 and was produced by John Lesher. It had its world premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on September 5, 2021, and was released in the United States on September 30, 2022, by Saban Films.