From Tehran to Sweden’s television
Lebanese filmmaker Hazem Shahin produced his first documentaries with IMS in 2006 and has since worked for both BBC and Al-Arabiya in the Middle East. IMS talks to him about his personal and professional journey from Tehran to Sweden.
By Sune Christiani
When Hazem Shahin makes documentaries he always tries to go beyond the appearance of his subjects to discover the human relations.
“I always spend a lot of time hanging out with the persons in my documentaries just getting to know them. And that is also what my movies are about, getting to know people,” says Shahin.
Building confidence
In 2004 Hazem Shahin moved from Beirut to Tehran to study documentary filmmaking. During his studies he was introduced to IMS in 2006. Shahin was invited to participate in an IMS workshop in Amman, Jordan as team leader of a group of Lebanese film students. The workshop focused on producing documentaries, editing and directing. Shahin also took part in another IMS workshop in the same year in Copenhagen.
“Afterwards I talked to IMS about making some documentaries. And they gave me equipment and funds so I could hire a professional team.
“The team I worked with in Amman was really talented. And they were also students, so this was a possibility for us to really learn something about how to make a documentary, instead of hiring a professional. We really learned a lot from it,” says Shahin emphasising that the most important thing he took from the experiences was more confidence in himself as a filmmaker.
“What I really learned from IMS, in addition to all the steps of making a movie, was management. Managing finances, people and time. Most importantly I experienced that I could do this even though I was pretty young. So afterwards I was like, yeah I can do this. I want to make more documentaries,” says Shahin.
From Tehran to Sweden
During his time with IMS, Hazem Shahin made two, “Tomy” and “Cluster Munitions: The Untold Stories”. Both movies deal with the political situation in Lebanon at the time. Watch Tomy below.
Hazem Shahin went on to make a documentary called “Qassem’s Smile” about the janitor at Shahin’s university in Tehran. Later Shahin made a more philosophical documentary about Ismael Saleh Abadi who has journeyed many countries on his bicycle.
“Ismael from the movie “Me and My Bike” is a really good example of someone who really tries to learn about the world. He comes from a poor part of Iran and really can’t afford what he is doing. But he does it anyway and he has seen more of the world than most of us,” says Shahin.
After Shahin finished his studies in Tehran in 2009 he started working for the Arab news channel Al-Arabiya as a cameraman and editor covering the 2009 Iran elections and the country’s green revolution.
When he moved back home to Beirut in 2010 he worked for BBC World Service in the Middle East and covered the Arab uprisings in 2011 among other events.
Hazem Shahin is now using his documentary skills in a different manner in Sweden. He is working in a more editorial function as assistant to the commissioning editor of the documentary department at Sweden’s Television (SVT). He is part of the team that chooses what foreign documentaries to show and what documentary projects should get support.
‘Real human bonds have disappeared’
But Shahin has not abandoned his trade as director, and plans to return and do more documentaries on social and human interest subjects.
“It seems that despite the many tools and technologies we have to communicate and it being so easy, we are more alone than ever. The real human bonds have disappeared behind the artificial kind, not just between one another, but also within ourselves,” says Hazem Shahin.
