Ishtiyak Ahmad Zihad

Ishtiyak Ahmad Zihad, born 2001, is a Bangladeshi filmmaker who recently completed a degree in Film and Media Studies at Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University. He started in 2019 with the experimental short God Gift and has since directed ten short films circling memory, political history and human vulnerability. His short Run Away (2020) won six awards across Bangladesh, India and the USA and screened at over a hundred festivals. His one-take short Chaya Moricher Bone (2021), drawn from the Bangladesh Liberation War, points to his interest in formal experiment and historical consciousness. In 2024 he was selected for Tech Tales Youth 2, a film lab run by EngageMedia in Malaysia, where he directed Whisper of the Ink (2025), a short fiction on digital rights and free expression set against the July Movement of 2024. His debut feature, The Blind Girl and an Elephant (2026), is in distribution.