Visiting PhD student | Fall 2026

Contact : ranjdar.mustafa.hassan@umontreal.ca 

Presentation

Ranjdar is a PhD candidate in Film Studies at the University of Montreal. His research focuses on testimony, traumatic memory, and the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of documentary cinema, with a particular interest in the narratives of Yazidi survivors who escaped captivity by armed extremist groups.

He holds a master’s degree from the University of Paris 8. In 2016, he founded the Department of Cinema at the University of Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region, where he also served as a lecturer and department director. He is a filmmaker, researcher, and multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of cinema, theatre, performance, and writing.

His filmography includes the documentaries The Origin (2016) and What Quantity of Oil is Needed? (2026, in distribution), as well as the fiction films 12 Shadows (2019), The Law of the Jungle (2020), Taxi Kurdistan (2021), and Dark and Bright Room (2022). He has also served as a jury member for several international film festivals.

Areas of expertise

• Documentary cinema
• Testimony studies
• Memory and trauma
• Representations of mass violence
• Cinema and politics
• Armed conflict studies
• Filmmaking (documentary and fiction)