Kurdwin Ayub

Director and screenwriter Kurdwin Ayub was born in Iraq in 1990 and lives in Vienna. From 2008 - 2013 she studied painting and experimental animation film at the University of Applied Arts and performative art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In 2011 and 2012, she received the MehrWERT Short Film Award of the Viennale and the Vienna Independent Shorts Newcomer Film Award in 2013. Seven of her works were screened in a special short film program at the BAFICI Festival for International Independent Cinema in Buenos Aires (2016), at the Sevilla European Film Festival (2016) and at the Viennale (2012).

Her first feature-length film, the documentary PARADIES! PARADIES!, for which she is credited as director, screenwriter and director of photography, screened at international film festivals and won the Best Cinematography Award at Diagonale 2016, the New Waves Non Fiction Award at the Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo 2016 and the Carte Blanche Newcomer Award at the Duisburg Film Week 2016. Her short film BOOMERANG won the Jury Prize for Best Short Film at the Max Ophüls Preis Film Festival 2019.