Roja Gashtili is a writer and director. She was born in Iran and later relocated to Missouri. After completing college, she moved to New York City, where she began her career in documentary filmmaking at Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions. She served as a coordinator on Charles Ferguson’s Oscar-nominated No End in Sight (2007). She contributed to notable projects including Martin Scorsese’s George Harrison: Living In The Material World (2011) and Lorne Michaels’ SNL: In The 90s (2015). Roja has also worked as a producer on MTV’s Exiled (2008), Morgan Spurlock’s Warrior Poets (2009), and content for Refinery29.
Based in Los Angeles, Roja collaborates closely with filmmaker Julia Lerman. Together, they created the short film Rita Mahtoubian Is Not A Terrorist (2015) during their fellowship at AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women. The film premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for the 2015 Student Visionary Award. Their earlier work earned them the Tribeca All Access grant and inclusion in IFP’s Emerging Storytellers Labs.
Roja and Julia made a short film, The Last Shift (2020), which was featured in the inaugural Tribeca/Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program. There, they presented the project to a jury including Julianne Moore, Patricia Clarkson, and Mynette Louie. They were also selected as fellows in Film Independent’s 2016 Directing Lab, where they are developing a feature adaptation of Rita Mahtoubian Is Not A Terrorist. The screenplay was one of five narrative projects chosen for the 2015 Sundance Creative Producing Labs. Roja served as executive story editor on Wonder Man (2026).
