Adam Hashemi

What thoughts are swimming around Adam Hashemi’s subconscious? You don’t have to look further than the 30-year-old Copenhagen resident’s music video for Danish alt-pop group Oh No Ono. “Swim”, the unsettling promo tells the story of a young boy who imagines his mother making out with a dying hospice nurse.

Tragic, absurd and visually poetic, the story springs directly from Hashemi’s childhood: as a toddler, he discovered the body of a nurse who had died suddenly from a heart attack in the hospice where his mother worked.

Though the sexual arousal part of the video was made up, the guilt theme is also real and very personal. “For some reason I was deeply religious at the age of five, and I remember praying for forgiveness for having sexual thoughts at the time,” he says. “Fortunately, I have grown out of that.”

Hashemi, repped by Bacon in Denmark, has since grown into one of Denmark’s brightest young talents, with “Swim” solidifying his reputation in the commercial world as a skillful storyteller. He’s about to start production on a feature and will add a music video for Mew to his reel, alongside spots for Sony Ericsson, Volvo, The Discovery Channel and Habbo. Furlined recently scooped him up for US rep, so we hope to see more from this off-kilter visionary in the years to come.

How have your first projects shaped you as a director?
I love that you discover things about yourself in the working process. I love finding the absurd in very real situations, for example in making a tragic scene involuntarily funny. Also, that I can be very visually poetic and that I have a weird penchant for films from the ’70s. But that hasn’t shaped me, it was already there. I’m shaped by the mistakes I make more than anything. And those mistakes have helped me get closer to what I really want to say and thoughts that have been in my subconscious for a long time.

Do you think advertising can become a personal expression for a director?
Mostly any type of job can become a personal expression, so why not commercials? My aspiration has always been fiction, but I would wither and die if I didn’t bring that aspect of myself into the commercials I make. Honestly, I try not to look at the money and think only of making something that makes me tick. I always think that I’m making Ben Hur, even if it’s the smallest ad with the crummiest budget. It can be hard, but it also makes the job worthwhile.

What non-commercial work of yours have creative directors responded to?
The Oh No Ono video definitely got me some work based on its filmic style and storytelling. But as I mentioned before, I try not to differentiate between non-commercial and commercial work. I know there are huge differences, but my starting point is the same. Q

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