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Sahim Omar Kalifa (born 1980 in Zakho, Iraqi Kurdistan) is a Belgian-Kurdish filmmaker based in Belgium. [1]
In 2001, he came to Belgium, and in 2008 he got his Master's degree in filmmaking at Sint-Lukas Film School, Brussels. With his short film Nan (2008), Kalifa won the Best Flemish Student Film at the Leuven International Short Film Festival. [2] Later on, Kalifa has gone on to win 96 international awards for his short films Land of the Heroes, Baghdad Messi, and Bad Hunter.
Some of his notable achievements include:
In 2014, Sahim was chosen in Istanbul as Best Kurdish film director. In 2016, Sahim was invited to be one of the more than 6,000 voting members of the Academy Awards. [8] In May 2016, Sahim started filming his first feature film Zagros, supported by Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF), Dutch Film Fund, and Eurimages. [9] In 2017, his documentary film Cornered in Molenbeek won the Best Belgian Documentary TV Series at the Docville Documentary Film Festival; it was also selected for the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival.
His documentary film Iraq's Invisible Beauty (2022) tells the story of the late Iraqi photographer Latif al-Ani and his photographic documentation of Iraq between the 1950s and 1970s. [10]
In 2021, Sahim began filming the feature film Baghdad Messi [11] based on his 2012 short film. [12] It had its world premiere on January 28, 2023, at the Ostend Film Festival. In August 2024, his film was selected as the Iraqi entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards. [13]