‘The film would come to life so vividly’: Iranian heritage inspires project of Austin filmmaker

Texas filmmaker Bita Ghassemi will tell you her introduction to film began as one of the “32 dumbest kids to ever walk the Earth.”

The Austin native was a child when her mother saw that Mike Judge’s 2006 movie “Idiocracy” was seeking extras.

“She took me to audition and I was selected,” Ghassemi said.

Austin filmmaker Bita Ghassemi

Ghassemi appears as an extra in the film’s epilogue, playing one of the 32 children of bumbling character Frito, played by Dax Shepard.

It was a tiny part, but that brief taste of the movie industry was the first of many that Ghassemi experienced growing up in a city whose budding film scene left an impression on her.

“It was just like this Austin indie film scene that was really prospering back then when I was younger, and I was exposed to it from just being around it,” Ghassemi said.

While the environment sowed the inspiration for Ghassemi’s passion for the medium, her background as an Iranian Texan has also guided her trajectory in the industry – from establishing an artistic collective to taking on her most ambitious project to date.

‘I will just build my own table’

While she says her Austin upbringing shaped much of her worldview, Ghassemi also says her experiences studying abroad in places like Germany and China was “really eye-opening.”

“But,” she adds, “I always have said I’ve had a round-trip ticket back to Austin, because Austin is home. Austin’s my home base.”

A top grad of the UT film school, Ghassemi says she spent much of her time in college maximizing every opportunity that she could.

“I worked on as many sets as I could in every single position. I learned from anyone who would let me come on set with them,” Ghassemi said.

But while she cut her teeth working on some sets, she also began to see areas where she could add more.

“I felt like not just the Austin industry, but generally the film industry is pretty homogenous,” she said. “I would go on to these real commercial sets, and I just wasn’t seeing anyone who looked like me. I wasn’t feeling welcomed in certain spaces. And I was like, ‘if I don’t get a seat at certain tables, I will just build my own table.’”

The experience inspired her to partner with some of her other UT collaborators to found PILLARBOXED, a production studio that prides itself on being led by women and people of color and that Ghassemi says has grown to become something of a cultural hub.

The group began by making low-budget – or “no-budget” films, as Ghassemi puts it – as well as music videos for local rappers. But it soon grew from there – hosting rap ciphers, poetry slams and other events that brought in and made connections with creatives from throughout the Austin community.

The growth of PILLARBOXED, which Ghassemi says has become more like a film or art collective, has both created space but also recaptured something she often hears is lost when locals talk about the ever-changing Austin.

“You hear so much from people like, ‘I miss old Austin.’ So me being from Austin, I feel like I – to my core – understand what old Austin is,” Ghassemi said. “Like, it’s just like a magical place, and it’s still there. The spirit and the soul is still there.

“But if we don’t preserve spaces like this for artists, for collaboration, for music, for dancing, what’s going to be left of Austin? What’s going be left of the city that was so magical?”

‘Firewall’

As she navigates her own creative output, a guiding light for Ghassemi – her “north star,” as she puts it – has been the “soft power” of carrying a message that crosses cultural boundaries through art.

“When I really started dipping my toes into film and photography, I realized that – especially film – it is an empathy machine. It’s the way to get the most amount of people to listen to you and your message,” Ghassemi said.

Ghassemi on the set of “Firewall” with the film’s young star, Ayla Farmand. Laura Huertas / Courtesy of Bita Ghassemi

Ghassemi’s Iranian heritage has become one of the central components to that message.

The daughter of Iranian immigrants, Ghassemi has drawn from her own experiences in navigating some of the aspects that stem from being a member of the diaspora – something that particularly came to the fore amid the recent Iran-Israel/U.S. conflict.

That most recent conflict erupted just as Ghassemi was hosting a screening of her latest, and most ambitious project to date – a short film titled “Firewall.”

“The past year and a half working on ‘Firewall,’ I would have never imagined now that I finished the film, the film would come to life so vividly,” Ghassemi said.

The film centers around Ani, a young Iranian-Texan girl who is unable to communicate with her father in Iran due to a government-imposed firewall – something Ghassemi says was seen again in a widespread manner amid the recent conflict.

The plot also shares echoes with Ghassemi’s own childhood.

“Back then, when I was a kid, there wasn’t WhatsApp. We’d have to use a phone card, and it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t go through sometimes. And sometimes weeks, months would go by where I wouldn’t hear from my dad,” Ghassemi said. “So it’s just insane that, in 2025, we’re still going through these same issues.”

The film also incorporates elements of Persian mythology as found in the book the Shahnameh. Ghassemi said the live action/CGI portrayals are the first time the tales have been presented in such a way – marking a big step forward for Iranian representation in cinema.

The project represents the culmination of her life’s work thus far, Ghassemi says, but just getting it off the ground proved to be its own epic task.

A grant from the Austin Film Society jumpstarted the project, but Ghassemi found they were still coming up short of what was needed. That’s when the filmmaker opted for a strategy she’d seem some of her peers and collaborators successfully implement – a crowdfunding campaign.

» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters

Over the course of a month, Ghassemi tapped into her community for support – and the outpouring both surprised and touched her.

“It was just like people were coming out of the woodworks being like ‘I followed your journey for so long. I’m so proud of you,’ and they would drop some money,” Ghassemi said.

Even after the funding was successfully secured – with over 300 backers – the production process of the film itself became an all-hands effort. But it was, again, a process that was realized by tapping into the creative community that Ghassemi had spent much time finding and building up.

“It was just like a ton of sweat equity. It was a ton of passionate people. And it has a ton of favors that I just asked for because over the years I had given a ton of people favors. That’s just how the industry works,” Ghassemi said. “I worked on so many of my friends’ sets. I had helped so many people do so many different types of productions, and at the end of the day, they helped me.

“So it was just so beautiful seeing over those five days the amount of people that came together to help me make my vision come to life.”

The power of the collective

In a way, that the realization of Ghassemi’s most ambitious project was a communal effort reflects one of the most prominent themes of “Firewall.”

“One of the core messages in the film is the power of the collective,” Ghassemi said.

She points to a particular scene, in which Ani asks her father how Texas cicadas could produce such a loud sound – to which her father says it’s their collective voices that allows them the ability.

It’s a theme that Ghassemi says is tied strongly to her experience as an Iranian Texan.

“There is so much power in the collective. There’s so much in collective voices and collective action,” Ghassemi said. “And there’s just so much going on right now – in the world – but between my two homes, between Iran and Texas. And it’s really beautiful seeing people get up and speak online, use their voices, go and protest.”

Ghassemi has so far only held a few screenings of “Firewall,” though she is hoping to take the film on the road later in the year and line up some premieres at film festivals.

And as the film begins to screen in front of more and more audiences, the filmmaker says she hopes her story has resonance.

“There are so many things I wanna say and so many messages I wanna send,” Ghassemi said. “But if I can just touch one person with my film in some way – whether that be about Texas, the American South, Iran, internet censorship, political turmoil, resilience, hope, anything. If you’re struggling with any of the above, which I have throughout my entire life, I hope I can touch at least one person and I can make an impact.”

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.