Iranians are individuals, too…

Rose Petal Pathways: Journeys Through Iranian America

…and that’s why I want to travel the country, meet Iranian-Americans, and make a documentary about their perspectives.

Should the U.S. really go to war with Iran over its nuclear program? Do Iranians really want to wipe Israel off the map? How can we improve relations between Iran and the United States?

Who knows the answers to these questions? Likely no one, but there live in the United States millions of people who immigrated here from Iran, most of them to escape tyranny. Many have lived here long enough to start families in their adopted country, and as these first-generation Iranian-Americans are actively forming a new cultural reality in the United States that combines their parents’ history and their own present lives. These individuals have fascinating stories about what it means to be oneself; what it means to be American; and what it means to be free.

My name is Julie Ershadi I want to tell these stories.

Check out my project to do so here: http://bit.ly/rpp-iran. I’m the daughter of an Iranian man and an American woman; a project like this has been on my mind for years. I’ve worked a journalist in Washington, D.C. covering U.S.-Iran relations, but this is an artistic as well as documentarian endeavor.

I’m crowdfunding in order to help make it happen; I’ve raised $1,600 so far. Everything I raise goes toward telling the stories of Iranian-Americans from a peace-loving, individualist perspective.

Watch the video below to learn more, and check out the crowdfunding page here.