Same Same But Different

Several years ago, our writer Dalia brought me this story of a weekend she'd spent at a friend’s wedding while we were searching for our next project together. As you’ll find, it was magical, and we both knew it had to be written. However, somewhere in the time between a coffee we had digging into her first draft and the table read a year later that launched our efforts to truly produce this film, I started to grapple with the “why me?” question. It’s one that you might have, as well.

At the center of this film are three girls with Iranian roots wrestling with cultural and personal identity, seeking belonging between their home country (or that of their parents) and the States, all while finding their footing in careers and relationships, on the cusp of becoming the women they’ll be in the world. As a woman in the world, I’ve lived many, many lives, between several career pivots, relocations, and relationships. Growing pains from self discovery is a thing I know well, but as for the rest: I’m a European mutt, born to a Midwestern dad and a Southern mom, raised a Mormon in Appalachia. I didn’t take lightly the responsibility of guiding the story of these three women in their particular identity journeys to screen.

I have this visceral image of a puzzle laid out on a table, each piece intentionally designed to fit together by its maker. It holds pieces of identity - forged from roots, culture, beliefs, and lived experience. Mine was primarily built inside the culture and doctrine of the LDS Church. Even though I always leaned more liberal than many of the folks inside that culture, even though being a Mormon was weird in my Bible Belt hometown, I still felt firmly rooted in my own relationship to it all, and it wasn’t until I was a student at Brigham Young University that I sat in front of my puzzle with a new piece in my hand that didn’t fit. I’d fallen in love with my best friend Sarah during our semester abroad. This new puzzle piece felt as perfect as the others I’d already laid down, as if by design, but I couldn’t force it in anywhere. It was the first time I didn’t know how to merge two pieces of myself, and it began a messy, complicated journey of examining my beliefs and conditioning, allowing contradiction to exist, and walking away from an institution that hurt me but still held my roots.

While I know this lived experience isn’t equivalent to the upbringing of a third culture kid, or the journey of immigration (and on that note – I’m endlessly grateful for the support of Dalia, my Iranian actresses, our Palestinian producer Zein who also grew up in the Middle East, and our language, history, and cultural consultant Arash Azizi), I DO know what it’s like to grapple with two pieces of identity. In our film, every single character is holding a new mismatched puzzle piece in their hands, on the brink of transition and evolution, seeking a sense of belonging between their roots and where they currently stand, and the journey to this point for each of them is a full on RIOT.

This film derives so much of its humor and heart from spotlighting three mixed-culture relationships. It’s joyful! It’s irreverent! It’s hilarious and personal and heartwarming! I myself spent several years in a relationship with an Iranian born woman – eating the best food of my life, laughing ‘til the wee hours of the morning to stories of our youth, struggling with her family dynamics when I was introduced, and stumbling together on how to best relate to each other. Ultimately, we had a hell of a ride. It’s the same for our characters Rana and Adam, Nadia and Ryan, Setareh and Pat. This movie is a celebration. At the moment, joy is not only resistance, it’s rebellion. And while our audiences sit with us for an hour and three-quarters, we hope they feel sheer, impenetrable joy.

I’m incredibly proud of the team of women I’ve been working with to bring this story to the screen. It’s an exhilarating experience, working with women who uplift each other, each with our own deeply rooted understanding of the beautiful mess that becoming a woman entails. I’m proud of this partnership with my “work wife” most of all, and feel honored that she chose me. We both care deeply about supporting each other’s lenses, and she is as supportive of celebrating my queer lens in our work together as I wholeheartedly support her crusade to tell meaningful stories for the MENA community. So, it’s important to me that you hear from the Arab-Iranian woman whose personal experience, combined with her incredible knack for comedic dialogue, originated our journey. Dalia Rooni’s writer’s statement follows:

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WRITER'S STATEMENT

I am a Middle Eastern writer and actor of the Iranian diaspora with a clear mission: to use comedy to change harmful narratives about Middle Eastern characters on screen. Because comedy disarms. It softens. It sneaks in. It lets us laugh before we look closer. It connects us before we even realize how far apart we’ve been. To me, it’s the most human way to tell the truth.

Is there a time in your life that you credit as the moment everything changed? For me, it was this. This weekend on Cape Cod. I was invited to a spontaneous wedding between my hippie-dippie foreign friend and a billionaire’s son. I thought it was just for papers. It turned out to be so, so, so much more. That weekend, in a giant summer home, on the most perfect beach, I witnessed two perfect weirdos fall in love. I made lifelong friends. I found my husband while a friend in attendance finally admitted her relationship was expiring. I had earth-shattering realizations about who I was and who I wanted to become. We all did. Almost in grief, I experienced – for the very first time – what losing my innocence would feel like. What becoming a woman would be. And it hurt.

I spent my adolescent years living between a conservative town in Pennsylvania and the United Arab Emirates. My parents are immigrants from Iran and Bahrain. I’ve attended both Catholic school and Muslim class. I’ve been labeled as both prudish and unholy. American and foreign. Exotic, ethnically-ambiguous, a POC, not a POC, a terrorist, and even worse… white! Truthfully, I’m a 3rd Culture Kid. Confused. With a dichotomy of beliefs, interests, and music taste (country really does it for me y’all, I’m not gonna lie). This story celebrates the grey area of “identity” without needing to define it. It celebrates the beautiful clusterfuck of emotions that is being from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

This story – and every story I write – is about moving the needle forward. For Middle Easterners. For women. For the next generation. For us.