Jila

Directed by Rakhshan Banietemad & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb / Editor Sepideh Abdolvahab, Hamila Moayed / Director of photography Dustin Pearlman / Sound Recordist Tessa Murphy / Sound Designer Amirhossein Ghassemi / Composer Reza Mortazavi / Unit Production Manager (USA) Sara Bird / Researcher Elham Shahsavazadeh / Research Management Team Firouzeh Saber, Zahra Emrani / Colorist Farhad Ghodsi / Graphic design & Title Mohammad Zamani / English Translator Sohrab Mahdavi /  Public relations and media Hadis Rahmani

With presence by: Jila Ajeli kashef, Mohammad Gharavi, Firouz Michael Naderi, Marjan Mohtashami, Shahla Etedali, Ziba Shirazi,…

Producer: Mojtaba Mirtahmasb

A Product of KARA Film Studio     

MAIN CHARACTERS

Jila Kashef (1955-2023)
Jila (Ajeli) Kashef was born in 1955 in the Shahpour Neighborhood of Tehran. She was known as Afagh until she was twenty years old. She was the third in a family of eight. When her father became bankrupt, the family fell on hard times. Afagh Ajeli started her first voluntary job at the School of Social Services of Tehran, which had been established by Mrs. Setareh Farmanfarmaian. Afagh had a high school diploma and knew how to type. Her mother, who had been working at the Ministry of Agriculture, found her a job, and this opened new horizons in her life. She changed her first name to Jila and, at the age of 20, decided to go to Germany to seek a better life for herself and to help her family. She obtained her BS in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Kassel in Germany.
Having migrated to the United States at the age of 29, she married Sohrab Kashef, a retired University of California professor. She took courses in IT and started working at the Sony Corporation. In the midst of her separation from her husband, she learned that she has breast cancer. She was 38 at the time.
In 2000, when Jila was working with the Society of Iranian Women in California and later the Society for the Protection of the Right of the Child (SPRC), she agreed to support three children her bother, Abbas Ajel, had picked. The fathers of these three children worked at Abbas' factory. Jila's support was contingent upon the children showing their school records each month. Gradually, with the help of friends at the Society of Iranian Women of California, the number of these children increased and the activities of Jila Kashef and her friends expanded.
Kashef, or "Aunt Jila" as the children call her, founded the Association for Youth Development & Mentoring (AYDM) in Iran and Keep Children in School (KCIS) in the US. She fought cancer for 25 years but never stopped working for the education of children. Having spent her childhood in poverty, her life mission was to make sure no child would be deprived of education due to poverty. To date, in addition to around 2,000 students who have received AYDM's financial assistance, more than 25,000 children have received other forms of educational assistance from the two organizations established by Jila.
On August 12, 2023, Jila (Ajeli) Kashef was relieved of her pains in Los Angeles. She willed her ashes to be spread on the waters of the Pacific Ocean.