Omid Iranikhah

Iranian-American writer/director and actor Omid Iranikhah focuses on stories dealing with the Iranian and Iranian Diaspora experience. His 2021 narrative short film "Don't Be a Stranger," a meditative drama about an Iranian couple's struggle to accept their drug addict son back into their life, played at a number of film festivals and won the Jury Award for Best Short Film at Accord CineFest. At the end of 2022, through his newly formed production company Stray Cats Productions (co-founded with Mercedes Garcia), he wrote and directed another narrative short film titled "Coffee With Baba." The now-completed film is slated for the 2023-24 festival circuit. Omid's accolades include winning the Michael Collyer Fellowship in Screenwriting and placing as a semifinalist in the Academy Nicholl Fellowships for his Iran-set folk horror screenplay "The Stoning of a Temptress."