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When her sister entered her into the U.S. green card lottery and she won at eighteen, Jewel Farshad stepped into Los Angeles carrying equal parts fear and resolve, determined to honor a promise to her father: pursue art and never “flop.”

Jewel shares the stakes of speaking out: family members jailed, the risks for Iranians using VPNs, and the grief of living in exile after losing her father during COVID. Yet she refuses bitterness. Her message is simple and specific: stand with the people of Iran, not the regime. We explore how she balances acting, modeling, and content creation as one mission, why storytelling, not lectures changes minds, and the kinds of films she longs to make, weaving Women, Life, Freedom into character-driven plots that entertain first and enlighten second. Along the way, she offers a hopeful lens on reform in the region and teases a new HBO Max project on the horizon.

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