Shamin Nizam is a born artist. As a child, he would draw, paint, and play music. However, what ticked his interest from a very early age were movies on VHS tapes his parents used to rent. Years later, Shamin became a successful filmmaker and media producer, bringing a new vision to the film and audiovisual scenes in the Maldives.
One of Shamin’s most vivid memories remains James Cameron’s Alien movies. When he watched Danny DeVito’s Mathilda and his parents told him the little girl’s super powers were camera tricks, his mind was set. “When I was 6 or 7, my parents got a mini tape camera, and since nobody knew how to operate it, I was the one in charge, and I started making small clips with my neighbor, making him disappear in the frame.”
Shamin joined the drama club in school, writing and directing school events. While in high school, he produced short clips and commercial videos that were gaining growing attention. He pondered whether to become a musician or pursue a career in programming to satisfy his parents’ concerns about the limited financial prospects of an artistic career.
“Everyone pushed me to find a middle ground, and the middle ground I found was multimedia.”
A calling to filmmaking after film studies
Shamin registered at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology in Kuala Lumpur to pursue a bachelor's degree in Creative Multimedia, where he learned about animation, graphic design, and film-making. He made his first two short films and gorged on as many films as possible. He also met like-minded people who inspired him. At that time, he said, between 2009 and 2013, “it was a different era compared to now.” “Without social media, we were bored, and being bored really helped.”
After graduating, he was convinced that he wanted to become a filmmaker. “It was a shock to everyone when I announced my decision.”
Film commercials: TV adverts with a twist
However, the money was not in film-making but in commercials. Together with two cinephile friends, he co-founded Madhoship Studios in 2013, a company making TV commercials based on storytelling, acting, high-quality dialogues, and emotional characters. “We wanted to break the norm and bring something different,” he explained. “It was never about earning a lot of money but making and saving enough money so that we could make a short film.”
Their new vision found its public. One project, Shamin said, opened the doors to a new way for commercials. “It was during Ramadan in 2014, at the early stages of the social media market, and nobody posted commercials on social media.” “We made a pitch about a boy’s first Ramadan, trying to fast and being hungry.”
The team was worried that an eight-minute commercial would bore the audience. However, on Facebook, the commercial got almost 300,000 views, nearly the entire population of the Maldivians. After that production, Shamin said, “We started getting a lot of film-based commercials, and that pushed other production companies to start narrative-based commercials.”
Their storytelling approach to shooting commercials attracted interest from large companies in Malé, particularly telecom companies facing fierce competition, as well as from international governmental organizations, including the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the United Nations Development Programme. Madhoship produces behavioral change documentaries, public service announcements, short films, and brand films.
Drawing inspiration from hollywood cinema
In 2016, Shamin was hired as a cinematographer in one of the local productions and won a National Award, which only reinforced his determination to focus on filmmaking. Supported by one of his mentors, Shamin applied for an ASC masterclass at the American Society of Cinematographers in Los Angeles, California, in 2017. It was an opportunity for Shamin to meet talented and experienced filmmakers and marvel at the film equipment.
Democratization of filmmaking in the Maldives
Despite some veteran Maldivian filmmakers’ discouraging advice that the country has a small audience, which does not generate enough revenue to purchase high-end equipment, Shamin, who wrote his bachelor’s dissertation on the democratization of filmmaking, notes that technology is changing and equipment is becoming more affordable.
However, Shamin explained, “the reason why our company has not positioned itself as an all-around production company is because we don’t have the proper equipment to make a good production.”
Breaking Maldivian norms with new film genres
Aside from commercial short films, Shamin and his co-founder worked on full-length movies. They explored different genres with the first full-length movie, “Vishka,” a thriller produced in 2017 with Shamin as a cinematographer, which won the 2019 Gaumee Film Awards (best Maldivian film released in 2017 and 2018). This was followed by several short films with the same will to break the norms. “I wanted to make films with better characters, and focused on good writing.” “We produced horror, science fiction, thrillers, and intimate films,” he said.
“What I am mostly interested in as a filmmaker is people’s lives in today’s world, so that people can identify with the characters.” “There are a lot of influences from many countries in Malé, and that needs to be represented,” he added.
Shamin explained that the audience’s tastes really evolved in the Maldives. The country “has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates, and the whole nation is exposed to different types of content from across the globe.” He said local production is slowly moving away from love stories and family dramas to genres such as thriller, comedy, and horror. Another notable change is the thirst for cinemas, particularly from the younger generation. “They want to watch films.”
Overcoming film distribution bottlenecks in the Maldives
Film distribution is a challenge in the Maldives, where there is only one cinema and over 200 inhabited islands. The only cinema is in Malé, and to distribute films in the different islands, according to Shamin, “usually a person comes with a thumb drive with the film on it, and it is played on a small school projector.” The money for the show is then collected from the school halls.
Shamin is working on a three-film anthology and hopes to promote it by showing the films at festivals outside the Maldives. However, regional and international festivals often remain unreachable for Maldivian producers, who cannot afford the travel and accommodation costs.
Raising awareness on film copyright in the Maldives
Copyright awareness for motion pictures and ways to fight for its respect remain scarce among Maldivian artists, according to Shamin, who noted that offline and online piracy is rampant.
The first Amendment to the Maldives Copyright Act came into force in March 2025, introducing penalties, heavier fines, and criminal sanctions for infringement.
In the next five years, he said, “I want to see more and more younger generations making serious films that can entertain Maldivians and audiences abroad.”
“I think that some recognition will happen to our films soon,” he said, adding, “I am confident it will happen in the next decade.” “There is a new crew, ten years younger than me, making a feature film, and they all studied abroad. These films will make it further than the Maldives.”
Shamin was a speaker in the 4th session of the WIPO Live Chat on 27 May 2025, in collaboration with the Maldives Department of Innovation and Creativity and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) of the Republic of Korea, focusing on copyright in the audiovisual sector.
