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Doing the Damn Thing Ourselves: Female-Led Comedy 'F1' Is the Latest Film Fundraising Campaign We Should Support

By Roxana Hadadi | Film | April 3, 2018 |

By Roxana Hadadi | Film | April 3, 2018 |


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A common theme here at Pajiba is the need for more female voices, especially women of color, in film, and projects that pass the Bechdel-Wallace Test. Well, F1 may be just the thing.

From the project description: F1 is a comedy about two young women who share the same home country, Iran, but have led vastly different lives. It’s a character driven film in which the stories of the women take center stage. A passionate, majority female cast and crew are at the helm of F1, and can’t wait to share this story.

The project is from Sheri Davani, a longtime assistant director who has worked on projects like the raunchy Aubrey Plaza/Alison Brie comedy The Little Hours, the Jack Black/James Marsden film The D Train, the Jessica Chastain/James McAvoy tearjerker The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby, and both of the films from fellow Iranian filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and The Bad Batch.

With F1, her directorial debut, Davani is exploring another Iran-influenced narrative about two women whose paths cross in Los Angeles as they deal with their own struggles — both political, like an immigration issue, and personal, like a terrible breakup. From the movie’s fundraising page at Seed & Spark:


F1 is a comedy about Mitra, an Iranian student on an F1 visa attending a university in California, who has her visa status revoked after only one semester for unknowingly violating its terms by being offered payment for volunteer tutoring services. The course of her future has been altered by getting kicked out of school, forcing her to go back to Iran without completing her degree program.

Nazanin (Naz), an American born Iranian actress whose own life is in disarray due to the horrible breakup of a long-term relationship, and who is currently homeless and sleeping on a friend’s couch, is asked by her mother (who’s oblivious to her daughter’s recent setbacks) to do her a favor. She’s been tasked with the responsibility of helping Mitra pack up her things, and housing her for the weekend, before putting her on a flight out of LAX to Tehran.

Naz, unable to tell her mom the truth about her current situation, only agrees to this because Mitra’s car has been promised to her as a token of appreciation from Mitra’s mom for her troubles. At first, Naz just wants to get through the weekend and get back to her pity party. However, once she spends more time with Mitra, she starts to feel bad for someone other than herself. Upon learning the severity of Mitra’s situation, with no real solution to the problem in sight, Naz decides to show Mitra a good time in LA during her last few days in America, hoping to send her to a more restricted life in Iran with a few good memories.


The Seed & Spark page is accepting donations to help reach their $50,000 goal, which they want to use for preproduction costs. I’m probably going to donate to what is being described as a “super-artsy independent film about the journey of finding oneself.” I love doing that! And supporting other Iranian creators of pop culture! And women! Please take my money.

Read more about F1 and donate to the film if you so choose here. That Girl Walks Home Alone at Night comic book would be pretty sweet, but obviously the bar crawl with cast and crew seems great, too, if you happen to be a Los Angeles local. And fingers crossed F1 meets this fundraising goal and gets off the ground—it seems like the Movie We Need Right Now.