Hemen Kurda has a degree in film from HDK-Valand in Gothenburg. He has worked as a teaching assistant at Valand’s film program and as a guest teacher at Nordiska folkhögskolan. In 2018, he started his own production company, Film Frame Studio. Hemen, originally from Iraqi Kurdistan, came to Sweden as a 17-year-old, a refugee from the Iran-Iraq war. As a child, he used the painted image as a means of processing his experiences of a growing up in a warzone. Today, he is confident that his childhood image-making has helped him as an adult to find his own filmic voice.