Elham Doust is an Iranian-American animator, director, and educator whose work bridges cultures, languages, and techniques. Over the past decades, she has worked in Iran, Turkey, and the United States, contributing to both independent and commercial animation projects. These international experiences have shaped her sensitivity to everyday details, emotional nuance, and storytelling across borders.

Elham’s creative interests center on hand-drawn and tactile animation techniques, especially paint-on-glass, which she uses to explore quiet, emotionally layered stories. While trained in both 2D and 3D production pipelines, and having worked on 3D projects that were selected for the Annecy International Animation Festival, her personal voice is most at home in handmade processes. Several of her paint-on-glass shorts have been recognized at international festivals, earning multiple awards for their visual sensitivity and poetic tone.

She is the recipient of the 2024 ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Educators Forum Faculty Grant, and the 2025 Austin Film Society Grant for Short Films, awarded to support the making of The Rabbit Story and Tomato.

Zoya Pirzad is a renowned Iranian-Armenian novelist and short story writer celebrated for her nuanced portraits of domestic life and identity. Her work is known for its quiet, elegant prose that explores the inner worlds of women, family dynamics, and the complexities of cultural identity.
Her major works include Things We Left Unsaid (چراغ ها را من خاموش می کنم), one of her most famous works and an international bestseller and awarded the prestigious Hooshang Golshiri Award for "Best Novel of the Year". Space Between Us (عادت می کنیم) is her other renowned novel that explores themes of love, family, and religious prejudice in a contemporary Iranian setting.The Bitter Taste of Persimmon (طعم گس خرمالو),One Day till Easter (یک روز مانده به عید پاک), and Like Every Afternoon (مثل همه عصرها) are her short story collections were bundled together in a volume titled Three Books (سه کتاب).

The Rabbit Story and Tomato is an independent animated short based on a short story from Like Every Afternoon (مثل همه عصرها) short collection. The story is told through the lens of a woman who struggles to carve time for her creativity amid daily routines.