Andy Sarjahani is an Iranian-American Southern-based filmmaker. He is interested in relationship to place and how that shapes worldview. His current work focuses on masculinity and nuance within the American South. He holds an MS in Sustainable Agriculture/Food Systems and left academia in 2012 to tell stories with a camera. He worked on the critically acclaimed documentary Tower (2016) and has worked as a cinematographer for VICE, Al Jazeera, Story Syndicate, Storyville Productions, and Arkansas PBS. He is currently a cinematographer on the PBS Southern Storytellers series (Craig Renaud; Arkansas PBS) and the co-producer and co-cinematographer on the Arkansas PBS documentary about the Johnny Cash and Daisy Bates statues. His short documentary currently in post-production, UNTITLED IRANIAN HILLBILLY was funded through ITVS Shorts Open Call and is being co-produced by Arkansas PBS. His recent short TO THE BONE, played Big Sky Doc Fest, New Orleans Film Fest, and Hot Springs Doc Fest where it received the Reel South Southern Shorts Award and is currently featured on the Reel South digital platform. His first film, Downstream People (2015) is an environmental justice story that explores the impact of industrial agriculture in one of Arkansas’ most impoverished counties. His feature, IRANIAN HILLBILLY received the Southern Documentary Fund Production grant and won New Orleans Film Society’s 2022 South Pitch competition. He was a 2022 Emerging Voices Fellow with New Orleans Film Society, a Storytelling Incubator Lab Fellow with DOC NYC and recipient of an Arkansas Humanities Council grant for this project as well.