TOOFUN WEST

As a 6 year old child, Toofun’s family fled Iran. Seeking a life far from the shadows of political unrest and war. For years they journeyed through European refugee camps and were smuggled into foreign lands. Amidst the turmoil, he found solace and inspiration in the realms of theater, cinema, and literature, where he could for a moment forget the hardships of his childhood and instead become the hero of his own journey.

The magical worlds found in pages of books and scenes from movies ignited in him a profound passion for the arts, and so he became a writer, director, producer, and eventually even garnering an accolade as a quarterfinalist in the Oscars Nicholl Fellowship in 2022, with his script ‘Asylum’. He’s now a father of three boys, and spends his days writing up new stories alongside his writer wife.

ANNA WEST

Anna was born and raised in Switzerland. Being that her family was in fashion, she grew up traveling the globe, getting the unique opportunity to experience from a very young age different people and cultures, and with it unfortunately the poverty that engulfs many parts of this world. She was always an avid reader and created short stories from the moment she could write.

At 18 she moved to Los Angeles, to pursue her calling, later meeting her husband and uniting their forces. She speaks fluently English, Italian, German, Swiss German, French, and Spanish. She is now a mother of two boys, soon to be three, and spends her days working on a novel and screenplay based on her grandmother’s survival as a hidden child in the Holocaust.