Islam Khanipaev

Islam Khanipaev is a director, screenwriter, and writer.

He was born and lives in Makhachkala. He graduated from DSTU with a degree in Oil and Gas Engineering.

At university, he became interested in cinema, assembled an amateur film studio, and began making short films. He participated with them in film festivals and received more than 15 awards. Khanipaev was more interested in working with text than in directing — writing scripts — so he always positioned himself first and foremost as a screenwriter. In 2016, he moved to Chechnya, where he worked as a director at the state film studio and, by his own account, sought to help his colleagues create a film industry within the republic.

After returning to Dagestan in 2017, he made his feature film “System 05,” a detective thriller about the murder of journalists in the republic.

He began writing long-form prose in 2014.

The manuscript “Kinda Me,” which won the 2021 Lyceum literary prize, was his sixth novel at the time. After winning the main literary award for young writers, the author received several offers from publishers and chose Alpina. At the same time, his new manuscript had already won the publishing program of the Tavrida art cluster and was also taken up for development by Alpina.

The novel “Kinda Me,” a finalist for the NOS, National Bestseller, and Yasnaya Polyana literary awards, also won in the “Readers’ Choice” category at the latter. The novel “Cold Eyes” was published in August of the same year.

According to the author, he has given up cinema and now wants to devote himself exclusively to literature.

Islam is married. He has a son.