Hisham Zaman

Hisham Zaman (born 1 February 1975) is a Norwegian film director and screenwriter of Kurdish origin.

Zaman was born in Kirkuk, Iraq in 1975.

When he was 10 years old, he was forced to flee the country with his parents and siblings.

The family spent several years as refugees in Iran and Turkey, hiding from the authorities to evade arrest.

They were eventually granted political asylum in Norway, where Zaman arrived at the age of 17.

Although he had an early interest in filmmaking, Zaman was told by his father that ‘cinema will not put food on the table.’ However, his mother used to let him and his cousins go to the cinema without his father’s knowledge.

After arriving in Norway, Zaman ‘took his father’s advice and began working as a car mechanic for Toyota to support his family.

In the evenings, however, he explored his passion for filmmaking by joining an amateur cinema club and using rented and borrowed equipment to begin making his own films.

In 2001, Zaman was accepted to the Norwegian Film School at Lillehammer, from which he graduated in 2004.

His diploma film, The Roof, played in a number of international film festivals.

The Bridge, a short film he shot with his classmates, was awarded The Norwegian Playwright’s Association’s Award for Best Screenplay at the Norwegian Short Film Festival in 2003.

Zaman received widespread critical acclaim for his breakthrough short film, Bawke.

The 15-minute film tells the story of a father, an undocumented Kurdish refugee making a dangerous journey across Europe, who is forced to choose between two evils for the sake of his young son.

Bawke was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for the Prix UIP for Best European Short Film at the European Film Awards.

He graduated from the Norwegian Film School at Lillehammer in 2004.

His films center on the stories and inner dilemmas of characters united by a common refugee experience, exploring human themes such as love, acceptance, sacrifice, revenge, loyalty and honour.

He has co-written several of his scripts with the Norwegian crime novelist Kjell Ola Dahl.

Zaman's breakthrough film, Bawke, won more than 40 national and international awards.

He is also a two-time winner of the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film, the only filmmaker to have been awarded this distinction two years in a row.

It received more than 40 other awards at festivals around the world, including the prestigious Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2005.

It also received an Amanda Award, the Norwegian equivalent of the Oscars, for Best Short Film the same year.

Winterland was selected as the opening film for the Tromsø International Film Festival in 2007 and won an Amanda Award for Best Actor.

Zaman’s debut feature film, Before Snowfall, is a road movie that tells the story of a young man who sets out on a quest to avenge his family’s honour after his sister runs away from an arranged marriage.

Before Snowfall was filmed over a period of two years, and shot in four different countries.

In 2010, it was named the best short film of the last decade in a poll by Norwegian film magazine Rushprint.

The film is dedicated "to all those leaving their native countries and their roots and language in search of a better life.”

Zaman’s next film was Winterland, a mid-length comedy about a Kurdish man living in remote Northern Norway, who enters into an arranged marriage with a woman from his home country whom he has never met.

Before Snowfall has been called a “dazzling drama about the shifting definitions of family, love, and honor.” The film opened the Tromsø International Film Festival in 2013 and was the most award-winning Norwegian film that year.

It won the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at the Gothenburg Film Festival for its “original and honest vision that goes beyond clichés.” It also won the award for Best Cinematography in a Narrative Feature Film at the Tribeca Film Festival.

According to the comments given by the jury for the award, “Before Snowfall packs a visual punch to match the force and ambition of its story” and “invites us into many vivid worlds and fulfills many possibilities for cinematography as an art form.”

Zaman’s second feature film, Letter to the King, features five characters on a day trip from their refugee shelter to the Norwegian capital city of Oslo, each with a unique agenda for the trip.

Tying the five stories together is the voice of an 83-year-old man, desperate to return to Kurdistan, who decides to write a letter explaining his plight to the King of Norway.

The script for Letter to the King was co-written with Mehmet Aktas, a Kurdish producer and writer from Turkey.

They wrote the script in three weeks, drawing on the stories of refugees they knew personally.

The film was shot in 35 days without any financial backing.

It has been called a “beautifully structured, highly emotional and deeply memorable ensemble piece” and one that “finds narrative diversity in the tragi-comic variety of immigrant experience.”

Letter to the King once again won the Dragon Award for Best Nordic Film at the Gothenburg Film Festival in 2014.

The award was given by the jury for “a film that is compassionate and honest in its presentation of human existence.”

The film also received the FIPRESCI award at the European Cinema Festival of Lecce, and was one of three films shortlisted for a nomination to the Oscar Awards by the Norwegian Oscar Committee.

Hisham Zaman presented his third feature film, A Happy Day, at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.