Our Participants

Between pulling himself out of homelessness amid his education, to their struggles with maintaining their mental health throughout the pandemic, the weight of the noise in Amir Malekpour’s life left little in terms of making stability easier. Especially as a first-generation Iranian-American, let alone filmmaker and artist, sitting in the shadow of cultural expectations of success as an Iranian, without the privilege of wealth that most Iranian-American’s here are afforded. But the opportunities he’s been blessed with through Group Effort Initiative, from interning for Anonymous Content, Somesuch, ABC’s How to Get Away with Murder, 44Blue, and Ovrture to being an Office Production Assistant for RadicalMedia and a Production Track Gold Intern for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has made what he once wrote off as a childhood pipedream, a warm reality.