Arman Khaghani is a Chicago-raised Iranian-American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. He received his MFA in TV and Film Production from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he received the James Bridges and Jack Larson Scholarship. In his first year, Arman’s cinematography work for A Sound to Remember also earned him the Edward Thomas Troutner Endowed Scholarship for Merit in Cinematography. Since then, he’s served as Director of Photography on a breadth of projects from the “choose-your-own adventure” interactive comedy The Case of the Missing Afikomen, which was featured online by Cooke Optics, to a natural disaster grief film in The Things I Leave Behind. Arman was the cinematography student assistant for USC’s LED Volume class for two years after its inception in 2023. He carried that experience into shooting The Coming, a period piece set in Aztec Mesoamerica which was filmed at the Virtual Production Stage at Amazon MGM studios.

As a director, he blends drama and comedy to tell stories about unspoken interpersonal conflict and the cultural circumstances of social isolation. Specifically, how pursued interests/skills serve as a universal language to express latent emotions. His short film Breathe, Brother, Breathe continues that exploration, drawing upon his Iranian heritage, and his experience as a caretaker and an asthmatic trumpet player in order to illustrate the roundabout ways we try to connect and the quiet, often invisible ways grief shapes a family.