ABOUT
VOICING THE UNHEARD
1401 Films is a media, culture, and education Studio.
We make films, publish, and document — because the story of Iran is not what most people have been told. For non-Iranians who've only encountered the country through headlines, we want to provide something closer to the truth. For the diaspora, we want to reflect an experience that rarely gets its own space on screen.
The Iranian diaspora has spent decades watching events in Iran through phone screens and internet blackouts. Our work is a response to that distance.
THE TEAM
Bardia Samia
Founder
Emery Eckman
Producer
SAINA SALAMATI
THE WALL EDITOR
WHY 1401?
1401 — 2022 in the Gregorian calendar, 2581 in the Shahanshahi, 3759 in the Zoroastrian — is the year Mahsa Amini was killed by the morality police, and a generation of young Iranians rose together in response. The Iranian people have been resisting this regime for decades. But 1401 was when it reached a scale the world could no longer ignore — protests in every corner of the country, a generation putting their lives on the line for freedom.
Those protests never fully stopped. 2026 became the deadliest year of the uprising — tens of thousands killed, MONTHS of internet blackouts, a massacre the world's media largely ignored.
We named the company after the year it became impossible to look away. The work is a way of making sure it stays that way.
FOUNDER'S NOTE
I'm Bardia Samia, the founder of 1401 Films. I'm Iranian — I grew up there, left as a teenager, and have spent most of my adult life as part of the diaspora. Watching Iran from the outside, through phone screens and internet blackouts and news coverage that mostly gets it wrong, is an experience a lot of us share.
I started this company because I wanted to do something with that experience beyond watching. Film, media, education — these are the tools I have. Iran, and the brave people fighting for it, is the subject I keep coming back to.
