Draft:Zainab Goelaman

Zainab Goelaman (February 18, 1992) is a Dutch poet, screenwriter and film director.

Biography
Zainab Goelaman grew up in an Indo-Caribbean Muslim household. She was born in the city of Alkmaar in The Netherlands and grew up in a nearby village named Heerhugowaard. Around the age of eighteen, she moved to Amsterdam to study.

Goelaman is a self-taught creative. After a study and career in music and talent management, she founded creative platform schrijfkunst in 2020, initially intended to publish her poetry and other creative writings. In that same year, she wrote articles for De Correspondent, De Speld and various magazines. In 2021, she taught herself how to write screenplays and participated in various talent development programs for novice screenwriters. She developed the web series Katwalk and Rakhi & Peppe for the NPO and co-wrote several television series for the public broadcaster.

In 2023, Goelaman made her debut as a writer-director with the short drama film SNOR, which has so far been selected for a Golden Calf for Best Short Film and Best Debut Film by the Dutch Film Festival, a Cinekid Lion for Best Dutch Short Film by Cinekid Festival and a Go Short VEVAM Award for Best Dutch Short Film by Go Short International Short Film Festival Nijmegen.

Cinekid Festival also bought a license for the educational film rights of SNOR to enable distribution at schools across Europe. In addition, SEE NL and Cinesud curated the film as New Dutch Talent to stimulate international festival distribution. This led to an inclusion in the catalog of Courts Mertrages, the short film corner of Festival des Cannes.

Goelaman's work is characterized by her socio-critical views and the prominent perspective of the bicultural woman. This gained her a lot of publicity, including a selection as Harpers Bazaar’s Woman of the Year.

Goelaman has been represented by Henneman Agency since 2022.

Filmography

 * 2023: SNOR (director, writer)
 * 2022: Dead End: Paranormal Park (voice actor)
 * 2022: Rakhi & Peppe (headwriter)
 * 2022: Katwalk (headwriter)
 * 2022: Nood (co-writer)
 * 2022: Seef Spees (co-writer)