PIROOZ KALAYEH, PhD
Filmmaker, Author, and Associate Professor
Pirooz Kalayeh is an Iranian American filmmaker, writer, and professor whose formally adventurous, hybrid cinema interrogates institutional power, displacement, and the boundaries of non-fiction storytelling. A solo practitioner who often serves as his own cinematographer, editor, and sound designer, Kalayeh blends cinematic disciplines to create deeply intimate, politically urgent visual essays. Currently serving as a faculty member in film and media production at the University of Rochester, Kalayeh consistently bridges the gap between academic theory and vanguard independent cinema.
Pirooz Kalayeh is a world-class filmmaker, writer, and multidisciplinary artist with a 20-year Hollywood and independent directorial legacy. He currently serves as Associate Professor of Instruction of Scriptwriting and Film and Media Production at the University of Rochester.
Holding a terminal MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics along with a PhD in Media and Communication from the European Graduate School, Pirooz Kalayeh's cinematic practice bridges advanced contemporary theory with commercial global distribution lines. His landmark independent feature films—including Ctrl Alt Del, Sometimes I Dream in Farsi, and Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen—are actively streaming globally on premium commercial platforms including Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV. He is the director of a celebrated, ongoing narrative-hybrid cinematic cycle exploring migration, displacement, and institutional borders, which includes Sometimes I Dream in Farsi, My Room in Tehran Was Called America (2027), and its upcoming third installment, Conference of the Birds.
"With My Room in Tehran Was Called America, I wanted to shatter the traditional boundaries of the immigrant narrative and create a new formal architecture for the essay film," Kalayeh notes in his director's statement. "This project is born from the fracture lines of displacement—anchored by Shohreh’s account of our initial meeting and her journey to America, which is then radically interwoven into her present-day reactions to the US and Israel War against Iran. By colliding intimate bedroom video diaries with the sweeping intellectual frameworks of thinkers like Wendy Brown, the film evolves from a solo memoir into a sprawling, choral critique of institutional power. As a solo filmmaker operating across cinematography, editing, and sound, the tactile texture of the media is entirely intentional; blending high-end digital formats with Zoom and smartphone footage reflects the disjointed, cross-border reality of the modern diaspora. This is not just a reflection on the past, but an active, form-shattering interrogation of the double standards of Western democracy, ultimately exposing the authoritarianism that hides behind the face of American freedom."
His latest feature film, My Room in Tehran Was Called America (2027), epitomizes this form-shattering approach—weaving bedroom diaries, cross-border histories, and choral critiques of Western structures into a singular cinematic tapestry. An autobiographical, form-shattering essay film, it details Shohreh Laici’s journey from Iran to the United States, confronting the immediate outbreak of the Iran war, administrative racism, and the fracturing of the West. The film shifts from intimate bedroom diaries to a complex, choral critique of institutional power, featuring interviews with prominent thinkers and writers like Wendy Brown, Porochista Khakpour, and Persis Karim. The completed feature is currently entering the international film festival circuit.
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In tandem with his feature-length non-fiction work, Kalayeh recently completed the short narrative film Race to the Tree (2027), which is also entering the international festival circuit. He will be shooting another narrative short, Language of the Enemy, in the Fall, and is slated to direct the dramatic feature film Digital Loneliness in the coming year.
Parallel to his narrative and documentary work, Kalayeh is the creator of an ongoing performance cinema series where he physically embodies prominent intellectual figures to investigate the architecture of truth. This includes his performance film project, Edward Said Talks about the Need to Make Things Real, which was an Official Selection at the Gaza Biennial, and an upcoming performance project hosted by Bard College's Hannah Arendt Center titled Hannah Arendt Talks about Actions that Make Us Political.
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His extensive feature-length film catalog includes The Human War (2011), Shoplifting from American Apparel (2012), Zombie Bounty Hunter M.D. (2015), Ctrl Alt Del (2017), Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen (2013), and the acclaimed documentary feature Sometimes I Dream in Farsi (2021). His virtual productions, which began during the pandemic with 100 FILMS, pioneered a remote directing methodology that he now uses across narrative, documentary, and essay forms to help audiences build empathy through the various philosophical, poetic, or spiritual concepts at play. This brushstroke, along with animated chats, childlike drawings, and archival footage, is often interwoven as another layer to help audiences move from one viewing space to another—or one mind to another—thus helping them shift perspectives, or at least see from another point of view for a moment to shatter previous expectations. His films are widely available to commercial audiences, streaming across Amazon Prime, Tubi, and other platforms, and have been reviewed and featured in prominent national media publications, including The Village Voice, L.A. Weekly, and Indiewire.
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He received his PhD in Media and Communication from The European Graduate School, where his dissertation focused on digital media and new hybrids within contemporary Iranian Cinema under the supervision of Mike Figgis and instructors including Terrence Malick, Wim Wenders, Wendy Brown, and Barbara Hammer. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.
Awards & Special Honors
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Official Selection – Gaza Biennial (Edward Said Talks about the Need to Make Things Real)
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Best Screenplay Award – Beloit International Film Festival (The Human War)
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Best U.S. Documentary Feature – New York Independent Cinema Awards (Sometimes I Dream in Farsi)
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Best Documentary Feature – Katra Film Series (Sometimes I Dream in Farsi)
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Best Participatory Documentary Feature – Lonely Wolf International Film Festival, London (Sometimes I Dream in Farsi)
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Best Refugee, Indigenous, Storytelling Award – Social Change International Film Festival (Sometimes I Dream in Farsi)
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Winner – New Michigan Press Chapbook Award (Shitting on Elves & Other Poems, with Loren Goodman)
As an educator, Professor Kalayeh aims to be a positive agent of change, breaking socio-cultural and linguistic barriers while upholding a non-competitive, multidisciplinary classroom environment. Drawing from his personal experiences as a first-generation immigrant, his time teaching abroad in Seoul, Korea, and a diverse career spanning work with underprivileged youth to guest lecturing doctoral students at USC, he strives to cultivate lifelong artists.
At the University of Rochester, Kalayeh runs his film production classrooms like mini-studios and collaborative laboratories. Melding a professional Hollywood studio regiment with the boundless imagination of independent, alternative media, he trains students to be as comfortable operating a mainstream blockbuster as they are creating an abstract meta-narrative. Under his mentorship, classrooms become spaces where technical mastery of tools like Adobe Premiere is preceded by Socratic discourse, live physical performance, and creative experiments that explore how editing, imagery, and poetry stem from the written word. He challenges his students to view mistakes and failures not as limitations, but as creative solutions and necessary pathways to innovation.
Selected Bibliography (Books)
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The Whopper Strategies (Novel, DirtEBooks)
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Shitting on Elves & Other Poems (Poetry Collection, with Loren Goodman; New Michigan Press)
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Golden Ashtray (Literary & Graphic Novel, Lulu Press)
Current Slate & Forthcoming Projects
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Language of the Enemy (Narrative Short) – Scheduled for production, Fall 2026.
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Digital Loneliness (Dramatic Feature) – In active development.
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Conference of the Birds (Narrative Feature) – Scheduled for development, 2027.
Research Interests
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Narrative Film Production & Screenwriting
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Hybrid Cinema & Documentary
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Transnational & Diasporic Media
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Performance Cinema & Cinematic Poetics
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Iranian Cinema & Post-Colonial Studies
