This week, Larissa speaks with Sam Mirpoorian , an award-winning Iranian-American filmmaker.
Sam explores societal themes at the intersection of time, isolation, health, and science. Sam has been busy promoting his first documentary feature, Greener Pastures, which follows 4 farmers across the Midwest. It documents their day-to-day lives on small multigenerational farms over the course of 5 years. The film is about mental health, industry nation, food production, and climate change. Sam started out doing everything: producing, directing, and driving hundreds of miles. Along the way, he got funding and support from Emmy-nominated producers. Greener Pastures was acquired by PBS and is now being screened.
Larissa & Sam chat:
- Growing up under pressure to excel, influenced by his father's Iranian heritage
- His father, a tech supervisor, exposing Sam to technology and filming everything with a camcorder, which kickstarted Sam’s love for hands-on storytelling
- Whether it was worth it to have a childhood so focused on the hustle and grind
- Sam championing mental health during the making of Greener Pastures
- Mental health’s connection to shame and secrecy
- The importance of “just listening”
- The 5 years making greener pastures, crashing on farmers’ couches, starting with no money
- Thinking Greener Pastures was never going to get finished
- When a mentor told Sam his characters were not compelling
- Driving across the Midwest alone: Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin
- Social sacrifice, not seeing friends or dating
- Submitting Greener Pastures to 18 film festivals, rejected by all of them
- Starting with no money to linking up with David & Linda Cornfield Emmy Award-Winning Producers and getting funding money
- Sam’s pitching story, and being honest that he was 25 years old, had no producer, and was shooting sorority videos on the weekends
- Self-comparison on social media
- Future filmmaking dreams. Top of the list, making a high school basketball story
- Letting go of over-promising under-delivering
- Feeling like an adult for the first time
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Original music by Haile Meirow “inside your tears”
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