My unconventional Midwestern Persian upbringing was not meant to lead me into a career in filmmaking. Born and raised in small-town Indiana, my destiny as an Iranian-American was to become a doctor or a dentist. But, when an injury forced me to stop playing competitive basketball in high school, I found myself with an abundance of free time. Trying to fill the void, I picked up a camera and made my first video when I was 16-years-old for a botany class. I dressed my friend up as a tree and had him plead with my classmates to recycle. I suppose this is also when my affinity for the environment began.

Once I finished high school I felt myself at a fork in the road and unsure of how to turn my growing passion for film into a career. So, I listened to my Persian family (again), and went to college where I received my bachelors and masters from the Indiana University School of Informatics & Computing, still not convinced I would ever be able to make a profession of my passions.

Fortunately, during my studies I was able to make two doc-shorts – Little Warriors and Sonnie. Little Warriors took home the Grand Prize Indiana Spotlight Film Award from the Academy Award-qualifying Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis. Sonnie played and won awards from over 40 film festivals across the United States and was a recipient of the Kodak Motion Picture Film Bronze Award for Excellence in Filmmaking. While in school, I also found work as an editor and producer of Andrew Cohn’s doc-short, Destination Park, which had its world premiere at Tribeca and an online premiere via The Atlantic.

Greener Pastures, started in the spring of 2018 when I heard an NPR news story on the CDC’s report on the decline of the agricultural industry. Milk and corn/soybean prices were at their lowest and most comparable to the 1980s. But, the figure that caught my attention was the number of suicides occurring. The suicide rate for the AG industry was/is the highest among any profession in the United States and I was shocked by this. Considering that farmers are our food providers, it seems they should maintain the same level of importance as doctors, lawyers and educators.

Being a Midwesterner who grew up surrounded by farmland, I was driven to tell this story. Over the next few months I started to reach out to anyone that could help me, and by the fall of 2018, production had commenced. I have been blown away by the families that’ve been so generous in allowing me into their lives to tell this story. I’ve also been surprised to learn that despite their political differences, they’re all fearful of climate change. All they want is a solution; a better hope; a light at the end of the tunnel. I hope that in telling their stories this film can be a part of some of that light.

I may not have become a doctor or a dentist, but I’ve never been prouder to be a filmmaker. I plan to share this film with my Persian family and let them know I am still making a positive impact in this life. I want to let them know you don’t have to follow a traditional path to change the world.