About

Filmmaker Ali Zulfikar Zahedi’s background and early life might suggest he was destined for a corporate life rather than directing. Born in Rajshahi in 1976, he spent his childhood between there and Bogura, where his maternal grandfather was a local businessman. And although Zahedi’s father, Matiur Rahman Zahedi, started his career as a university lecturer, he was working in the pharmaceutical industry by the time Zahedi was growing up.

However, as Zahedi entered adulthood, there were already hints that he was looking for a little more than the typical corporate career. His education took him increasingly further from his family home in Bogura, first to Gazipur, then Dhaka. When it came to gaining a bachelor’s degree BBA and his MBA, he left Bangladesh entirely, opting to study in India.

Returning to Bangladesh after graduation, he began the business career that seemed the obvious choice. “I’ve been a corporate employee since 1999,” Zahedi says, “I began as a marketing executive and worked my way up organisations while continuing to learn.” However, despite working, in turn, for Korean, Japanese, and American multinationals, something was still calling him away from his home, and his next step saw him leaving the continent entirely.
A period of further study in London, this time in advertising, was followed by four years working in Qatar. By now, Zahedi’s story gave a clear picture of a corporate success. With an impressive and varied education backed up by his own experiences of travelling and working internationally, it suggested an obvious future in business. Indeed, his 2014 marriage to Samia Habib, a member of Saudi Airlines aircrew, perhaps underlined his multicultural and globe-trotting career.

But despite his success in the world of business, Zahedi is not following that well-beaten corporate career path. Instead, he is drawing on his experiences and, having returned to his native Bangladesh, entering the world of filmmaking. “I never intended to be a filmmaker,” he says, perhaps surprisingly, “but I always wanted to be creative.”

The move into filmmaking may seem unusual. The creative and business industries are usually worlds apart. Although many stars move from the set to the business side of movies, and a rare few go the other way, corporations and the creative industries are typically quite separate: spreadsheets and business plans are not obvious inspirations for emotive scripts.
However, Zahedi’s career, mixing travel with ongoing education, might hint at a yearning for adventure that was not being satisfied. “Even as a young child, I would write poems. I always wanted to write: poems, songs, short stories,” Zahedi explains. And with a creative heart, it is no surprise he developed a love of movies.

Like many youths in a time before the ready availability of streaming, regular visits to the cinema were a feature of his teen years. “Going to the movies was a crazy entertainment,” he recalls, “I had a steady diet of movie-watching throughout my adolescence.” But while the movies captured his creative imagination, he did not believe it was a possibility for him. “I used to believe that being a director was a dream job, but one that very few people ever got.”
However, despite his corporate success — by this time Zahedi was the national representative for a Canadian multinational — his creative desire remained. “I realised I had a movie addiction,” he confesses, “and planned to make my move with my own money.” It was around this time that he also began to realise that, far from keeping him away from filmmaking, his business career was preparing him for it.

“As I learned more about the movie industry, the more I learned about the opportunities,” Zahedi said. “Directors organise the creation of the movie. Directing needs a lot of delegation and collaboration: working with actors, cinematographers, editors, composers, and hundreds of others. In many ways, filmmakers are like managers, just in a different field.” It was time, Zahedi realised, to take all his life and business experience, and all his passion and let them work together to make films.

His first foray into filmmaking, The Sound, was released in 2020. The short film saw Zahedi picking up scriptwriting, production, and directorial duties without a pre-screenplay. Shown across the world at film festivals, The Sound has won multiple awards, both as a film and for Zahedi’s different roles behind the camera. Ali Zulfikar Zahedi released his first feature-length movie in December 2022. Kagoz (or The Paper) stars Mamnun Hasan Emon and Airin Sultana. As well as writing and directing the movie, Zahedi also penned the lyrics for the theme song and sequence song, performed by “Zakia Sultana Karnia” and Indian famous singer “Somlata Acharyya Chowdhury” Released nationally,