The Old Young Crow

This film was born out of a major personal health and identity crisis while I was studying in Tokyo. I met Shohreh Golparian, who was Abbas Kiarostami’s translator and assistant while he was making Like Someone in Love, his last narrative feature, in Japan. She’s also the liaison and contact for many great Iranian directors who come to Japan like Mohsen Makhmalbaf and Amir Naderi. She introduced me to the retrospective that galvanized me to make the film. Those films are “The Runner,” “Where is The Friend’s House?,” “Willow and Wind,” and “The Mirror.” I decided then to make a film about my time living and studying and working in Japan, as well as focusing on the Iranian diaspora in Japan. There was a really amazing experience of reconnecting with my own culture and diaspora through being in Japan. The film is a combination of animation and live action, both my trades, and an intersection of my family and journey involving grief. It’s a mission statement of the kind of films I want to make, crossing mediums and cultures and languages in order to reconnect with my own.