Hajiyev was born on August 28, 1982, in
Baku,
Azerbaijan SSR. After graduating from
West Texas A&M University in 2006, and before moving into filmmaking, he worked as a marketing director within various commercial entities in Azerbaijan. Hajiyev produced several short films through his company FIL Production, including
Torn (2014) by the
Academy Award winner Elmar Imanov (premiered at the
Cannes Quinzaine des Realisateurs in 2014). He premiered the first movie that he directed, the short film
The Wound, at the
Palm Springs ShortsFest in 2013. His second short film,
Shanghai, Baku, premiered at the
Tampere Film Festival in 2016, and his third,
Salt, Pepper to Taste, at the
International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2019. The latter movie was included in
Kinoscope’s “Top Five Shorts of 2019".
Towards Evening was the first Azeri film included in the
Critics' Week section of the
Cannes Film Festival, featuring there in
2020. Hajiyev is the only Azerbaijani filmmaker to have participated at Cannes as a director and a producer. ==Filmography==