Zaynê Akyol is a Kurdish born filmmaker who grew up in Quebec. She studied Communications with a focus on film at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she produced her first short documentary, Isminaz, which received the Jury Prize in the Radio Canada International Roots competition. She later made the medium length documentary Iki Bulut Arasinda, also known as Under Two Skies, which won the Jury and People’s Choice awards at the Festival Vidéastes Recherché(e)s and the Vox award at the Rendez vous du cinéma québécois festival before screening internationally. Her early work reflects themes of exile, immigration and expectation, explored between Quebec and Turkey.
Alongside her filmmaking practice, Akyol has pursued research in film and moving images as part of a master’s degree in Communications. Her work examines creative and relational issues in documentary filmmaking, and includes a memoir titled Shared Relation and Creation in Documentary Filmmaking. In 2012, she began writing her first feature documentary, Land of the Roses, My Name Is Gülistan. The project’s script in progress was selected for the Doc Station programme at the Berlin International Film Festival. Released as Gulîstan, Land of Roses, the film offers a personal view of the daily lives of women fighting within the ranks of the Kurdistan Workers Party against ISIS. Through this work, Akyol engages with the political issues she sometimes lectures on while remaining connected to her Kurdish heritage. The film is a co production between Canada and Germany.
