NYKFF8 Film Selection Committee
Jury Coordinator
Aram Hassan Abdullah
Aram Hassan was born in Silêmanî, South Kurdistan. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in cinema. He has worked as a cinematographer and director.
His films include Sarab (2009), Yazidi (2017), Living Together (2019), Yar(2022), Lost Song (2023), and Not Raining in Every Cloud (2024).
Animations
Pejman Alipour
Pejman Alipour was born in 1975 in Sardasht, western Iran, and is currently based in Mahabad. He holds a master’s degree in directing animation from Tehran Art University.
As a director, writer, animator, illustrator, and cartoonist, he has created many animated films, which have appeared and won awards at numerous international film festivals.
Hazhar Mohammed
Hazhar Mohammed attended the College of Fine Arts at the University of Silêmanî. Skilled in character design, he directed the 3D animated films Ahol, Qaetul, and Maxolan.
Mohammed co-founded Nergz Animation Studio and lives in Silêmanî.
Semiha Yıldız
Semiha Yıldız was born in 1994 in Şırnak and earned a degree in computer education. She directed the animated films Cûdîyê Miradan and Botan.
She currently works as an editor at Botan Times, based in Diyarbakır.
Documentaries: Feature and Short
Azad Azizyan
Azad Azizyan is a Kurdish-American documentary filmmaker who pushes the boundaries of the documentary genre to represent the experiences and emotions of its participants. He has collaborated with artists in all parts of Kurdistan and the diaspora in works that reflect on Kurdish memory and how it passes through oral history from one generation to the next. Additionally, he works with Kurdish film festivals worldwide to introduce Kurdish cinema to non-Kurdish audiences. He hosts the monthly Kurdish Cinema Talks for the New York Kurdish Cultural Center.
Rozha Hasan
Rozha Hasan holds a degree in cinema from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Silêmanî and is currently a master’s student.
She has produced, written, and directed three films that highlight, through the use of language and emotional tone, the role of women in society.
Frances Underhill
Frances Underhill has worked for various independent documentary production companies, film festivals, and community arts organizations, in production, event organizing, programming, outreach, and marketing, with a focus on social justice and activism. For many years she was a programmer at the international Human Rights Watch Film Festival.
Underhill was part of the team that launched the first New York Kurdish Film Festival in 2017.
Fiction Films: Feature and Short
Bilal Korkut
Bilal Korkut, a native of Mardin, North Kurdistan, studied filmmaking in Istanbul and in Mardin. He currently lives in England.
His feature film Bîraxane was screened at NYKFF7.
Rebaz Mutabchi
Rebaz Mutabchi was born in Silêmanî in 1988 and studied theater at that city’s Fine Arts Institute in 2004. He worked as a director and cinematographer in film and television, then studied cinema at the University of Silêmanî.
Mutabchi’s first short film was Hidden (2020). He has directed 7 short films and 21 documentaries.
Sener Özmen
Sener Özmen was born in 1971 in Hezex, Şirnex, and participated in dissident art practices in Istanbul (1990s) and Diyarbakir (2000s). He is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, novelist, and art criticism who has written extensively about Kurdish identity, militarism, sexism, art, migration, and much more in books and periodicals. His short films and video works have been screened in art museums and group exhibitions. Currently based in Chicago, he is the director of the Serbest Foundation.
Student Films
Kamuran Demir
Kamuran Demir holds a degree in cinema and television. Since 2013 has worked as a cinematographer on numerous projects.
Demir currently works at PK Film.
Amir Gholami
Amir Gholami was born in 1984 in Bukan, East Kurdistan, Iran. He holds a master’s degree in cinema. He has published books and articles about the representation of disaster in Kurdistan cinema.
His short films and documentaries have screened in more than 100 international festivals and received 20 awards.
Salar Said
Salar Said studied filmmaking in Sweden and since 2005 has worked in film and TV as a director and producer. His films include General’s Photo (2012), The Park (2012), and One Way or Another (2013). From 2016 to 2020 he lectured in film at the University of Silemani on experimental cinema, photography, and film production.
Currently, Said is in his second year of PhD research at Manchester Metropolitan University.
