Heart projects

Zamarin Wahdat actually feels right at home behind the camera. That's where she seeks out intimate moments, wants to capture emotions, be close to the actors and the action - and help the Directors realise their vision. But since 9 February 2020, she has often been in front of the camera and has to give interviews again and again. On this day, the team behind the documentary wonLearning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you're a girl) the Oscar for best short documentary. And Wahdat is part of this team, which has travelled to Afghanistan twice for several weeks despite great adversity to accompany the girls of the non-profit organisation Skateistan in their everyday lives.

Filming in Kabul

For most film-makers, the Oscar is at the very end of the "to do list", if at all. The 31-year-old from Hamburg can put the trophy on her shelf as her first big prize. And for a project close to her heart. She travelled back to her home country of Afghanistan for the documentary - for the first time in her life. "Of course, my mum here in Hamburg wasn't at all happy when I told her about my project. We fled from there back then - and I'm simply travelling back again. It was a very emotional journey for me that I will never forget," says Wahdat. She cannot remember her childhood in Afghanistan. She was just two years old when her family decided to leave the country due to the unrest. When she was in Kabul in 2017 for the filming, the situation had hardly changed. Attacks are still the order of the day and fear is always present. Nevertheless, she didn't hesitate for a moment when her professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts in New York asked her to take on the project: "I said yes straight away - I only told my family about it afterwards," Wahdat reveals. The rest is Oscar history.

New projects

And what comes next? After the Oscars, the coronavirus restrictions began and the film industry came to a standstill. The newly crowned Oscar winner continued her education online and continued working on a long-term documentary about the Syrian swimmer and activist Sarah Mardini in Berlin. At theScreen Talent Europe Pitching Forum, she was able to beat the competition with another project and take home production funding totalling 4,000 euros. A story about girls in Afghanistan who are brought up and dressed as boys. She will develop the project together with her sister Katrin Wahdat. A personal story, a second project close to her heart. But this time she has the pen in her hand.

The camera comes first

A Director of Photography who also writes scripts? At NYU Tisch School of the Arts in New York, where she did her master's degree, she majored in cinematography and script. "But in the end, we had to do everything, from editing to Directors to camera work. It was three years of military service. You were trained to be an all-rounder. Now, however, that really benefits me," says Wahdat and can't help but laugh. For "Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if you're a girl)", she took over the second camera and conducted interviews with the girls on location, but she is currently focussing on writing - even if the camera still comes first. "I've always been a big film fan, but dialogue was never my thing. I was always better at expressing myself through images," reveals the Director of Photography.

Inspiration

Are there cinematic role models for your camera work? "I was inspired by Adam Arkapaw's visual work in the war dramaLore enamoured. The intimate camera work by Joshua James Richards inThe Rider touched me deeply and his work still influences me today. The Indian Director of Photography Subrata Mitra also created particularly strong images in theApu Trilogy captured. You only have to pick out one frame and you have a whole story," Zamarin Wahdat enthuses. But she also looks up to many colleagues in her immediate environment and sees them as inspiration. She has recently joined forces with some of them via the global collectiveSporasco which is committed to diversity in the camera industry - an initiative that she felt was missing in her early days as a Director of Photography.

In her own camera work, it is important to her to understand the Directors' world of thought and to translate the words of the script into images. She wants her images to become part of the story and not distract from it: "I want to get to the heart of a scene. I would also never interrupt a good acting performance just because I might be a little unhappy with the lighting. Because you usually can't repeat that authentic moment," says Wahdat.

Script about childhood

Her next camera work will take her to the USA, where she will capture a magical realism project in pictures. There is also a very personal story waiting to be told: The memory of her childhood begins when the family arrives in Hamburg and has to live in an asylum centre for two years. "It was a bit like living in a student hall of residence. Each family had their own room, and you had to share the bathroom and kitchen with others. And there were lots of children - practically from every country that was at war at the time," she remembers. But even if everything was a bit chaotic, the asylum centre was her home. A time worth reporting on. She has been writing the script almost every day for a few weeks now, travelling through her memories. And this film will also be a project close to her heart, for sure.