[1] In 2000, his debut feature film, Surviving Paradise, was released to a three-month theatrical run in U.S. cinemas, introducing Shohreh Aghdashloo to Hollywood and becoming the first English-language Iranian feature film by an Iranian-American filmmaker to be distributed in North America.

In 1986 he returned to San Francisco State University to study a bachelor's degree in computer science.

[citation needed] On his return to the United States, he began to combine his interest in short stories and photography into filmmaking.

[6][7] Kooshan was a founding member of Golden Thread Productions, theatre company in 1996 in San Francisco.

[8] Following this tour in 1996, he received an offer from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco to teach screenplay writing and "Aesthetic & Style" at the Graduate Film Department.