
Directing
Kurdwin Ayub was born in Iraq in 1990. Currently, she works as a director, screenwriter, and video and performance artist in Vienna, Austria. Studies in Painting and Animation with Christian Ludwig Attersee and Judith Eisler at the University for Applied Arts Vienna from 2008 to 2013. Since 2011, studies in Performing Arts with Carola Dertnig at the University of Fine Arts Vienna. Her shorts have been shown and awarded at numerous international film festivals. In 2013, Ayub was awarded the Vienna Independent Short Newcomer Prize, in 2011 and 2012, she received the Viennale Mehrwert Short Film Prize. In 2012, she presented a series of her short films at the Viennale. Her feature documentary Paradise! Paradise! – direction, screenplay and cinematography by Ayub – won Best Camera at the Diagonale – Festival of Austrian Film, the New Waves Non Fiction Award at the Sevilla Festival de Cine Europeo and the Carte Blanche Prize of the Duisburger Filmwoche in 2016.

Sitting on her bed, Kurdwin Ayub wears a babydoll and hugs a blanket in her arms. She speaks to the camera as if addressing her ex-boyfriend. How to react to his eyes staring at us?
Filmmaker Kurdwin Ayub dances through Vienna on her own to the sounds of Go! Go! Gorillo, exploring public spaces in her black chador. She encounters amused groups of men and apathetic passersby, letting nothing disturb her calm or throw her off-beat. Dancing on her own, so to speak. The final highlight is a wonderful quote from Andrzej Żuławski in a U2 station!

Kurdwin Ayub captures the intimacy of a trip she made with her father. Family visits alternate with real estate tours searching for an ideal apartment: her father's will, as he's planning to retire, is to find a place so he can finally return to that stateless territory he proudly calls "homeland".

Sarah, a former professional kickboxer from Vienna, accepts an offer to work as a personal trainer for a rich family in the Middle East. She finds herself in a foreign world, in a palace behind walls and cut off from the internet, where the sisters are under surveillance around the clock. They have no interest in learning to box. So why has Sarah been brought here?

Sarah, a former professional kickboxer from Vienna, accepts an offer to work as a personal trainer for a rich family in the Middle East. She finds herself in a foreign world, in a palace behind walls and cut off from the internet, where the sisters are under surveillance around the clock. They have no interest in learning to box. So why has Sarah been brought here?

In pretty-pretty, Kurdwin Ayub’s reflective self-staging meets Viennese Actionism, body horror coalesces with beauty, and the pain that Ayub has so often staged becomes physical for the first time. As she applies a fine needle making viewers’ nerves twitch, a bloody, radiant smile spreads across her face. (Diagonale 2020, die Unvollendete, Catalogue, mk)

Young women, Austrian style. Yesmin is Kurdish and wears a headscarf. She shoots a cheeky burqa video with Bella and Nati which makes the trio famous in the Muslim community. Controversy and alienation ensue. Immediate, exuberantly introverted cinema.
Filmmaker Kurdwin Ayub dances through Vienna on her own to the sounds of Go! Go! Gorillo, exploring public spaces in her black chador. She encounters amused groups of men and apathetic passersby, letting nothing disturb her calm or throw her off-beat. Dancing on her own, so to speak. The final highlight is a wonderful quote from Andrzej Żuławski in a U2 station!

Kurdwin Ayub captures the intimacy of a trip she made with her father. Family visits alternate with real estate tours searching for an ideal apartment: her father's will, as he's planning to retire, is to find a place so he can finally return to that stateless territory he proudly calls "homeland".

Sitting on her bed, Kurdwin Ayub wears a babydoll and hugs a blanket in her arms. She speaks to the camera as if addressing her ex-boyfriend. How to react to his eyes staring at us?

Sitting on her bed, Kurdwin Ayub wears a babydoll and hugs a blanket in her arms. She speaks to the camera as if addressing her ex-boyfriend. How to react to his eyes staring at us?

Adnan is obsessed with going to his ex-wife's housewarming party. Unfortunately, he isn't invited.

Adnan is obsessed with going to his ex-wife's housewarming party. Unfortunately, he isn't invited.
