Jon Sahagian is an Armenian-American filmmaker born and raised in Southern California. An MFA graduate of USC, he has created more than 20 short films that have debuted at over 70 domestic and international film festivals. Jon loves to tells stories imbued with meaning, heart, and comedy; he is most interested in using film to tackle humanity's deepest questions, but through stories that are fun and adventurous.Before starting his filmmaking career, Sahagian earned his BA in journalism from UC Irvine where he wrote award-winning articles on topics ranging from the sciences to humanity and philosophy. It was as an undergrad that Sahagian realized the power film has to influence the world, and so he decided to utilize his writing background to pursue an MFA at USC, directing several award-winning shorts, and eventually writing and directing the school's largest project, which premiered at SXSW. Jon also spent two summers in Tokyo training under a director from Japan's Studio Ghibli, and this Japanese influence often bleeds into Jon's films.
Jon has also run a behemoth Pokemon website since he was 14, which sees over 4 million visitors a month and has a staff of 90 people. Jon continues to run PokeBeach to this day, writing and editing articles daily going on 17 years. His dream is to one day make a live action Pokemon movie.
