About Yearbook

Yearbook Films is a multi-award winning film production company, and was founded in 2021 by Kira Thiphavong, Saba Askari, and Jenelle Hagerman.

“11:47 PM, Christmas eve, 2021. We were filming our first short in a suburban Shell Gas Station. No money, no permits, barely a crew, barely a shotgun microphone. In between takes we’d huddle in our heated car, our lead actress and co-founder, Saba Askari’s costume was a skin-tight mini skirt and bra. If I could think back to a time that defined Yearbook for what it was, it was that.” - Jenelle Hagerman

Born out of film school, where Friday nights were spent in editing labs, where shitty student film projects first wrapped, and where friendships were forged over borrowed gear and the shared fear of never actually being able to follow their dreams. For the founders, this career adolescence carried the weight of a yearbook: a record of who they were, their coming-of-age, and what they were trying to say.

That coming-of-age feeling stayed with them, inspiring an ethos; filmmaking wasn’t technical- it was an obsession. Yearbook became a way to capture that energy and extend it beyond school. The goal was to build a sort of film cult, united by the shared thrill of making work that mattered to the world.

Today, 5 years later, the company gravitates toward films that feel personal and uncompromising, stories that takes risks, and don’t always absolve audiences from the world around them. For Yearbook, independent films are where voices sharpen, and a creative vision has room to be understood. Every project is a snapshot: the years of funding, the months of notes, hours of tech scouts, the rewrites, the edit, the film.

Founded with the desire to keep the early fire alive, to surround themselves with a cult of filmmakers equally obsessed, and to see what happens when those pages, those films, come together, this is Yearbook.