Mirwais Rekab

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Mirwais Rekab (b. 1970) is a film director and cameraman from Kabul, Afghanistan. Rekab has worked on numerous film, television and music video projects. His film ‘Kabul Cinema’, won the Ellen Award at the Aspen Film Festival in the USA, received a Special Mention of the Jury at the Hamburg Short Film Festival and was screened at many international festivals. He is the recipient of over 10 international film awards. He was also the first assistant director of the film ‘Osama’ by Siddiq Barmak, which won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film and numerous awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Rekab was also a cameraman to Atiq Rahimi on the film ‘Ash and Earth’, which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival in 2004 and also won an award.

After the completion of his baccalaureate in Kabul, Rekab started working at Afghan Films at the National Cinema Institute as an assistant cameraman in 1992 and then worked his way up to cameraman. During these years, a tough civil war destroyed Kabul. Under the Taliban regime when all cinemas were completely banned, Rekab went into exile in Pakistan, where he lived as a refugee and made films for NGOs from 1996 to 2001. Just after the liberation of Kabul, in December 2001, he returned to Afghanistan and began to work at Afghan Films again. In 2003, Rekab established New Wave Cinema Collective intending to bring the school of thought from European new wave cinema to Afghanistan and provide high-quality video and audio services.

Following the Taliban takeover in 2021, Rekab again fled from Afghanistan and arrived in Berlin as an Artists at Risk (AR)-Resident. He currently lives in exile in Europe.