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Dead with a Side of Saudade
Zeed
Release year: 2024
Run time: 18 minutes
Film type: Fiction
Synopsis
A poignant and evocative film set against the backdrop of Hong Kong's rich history, the story revolves around two souls from vastly different backgrounds who find solace in reliving the moments that made them truly feel alive.Through its exploration of saudade, a Portuguese word that encapsulates a deep longing for something or someone that is lost, the story follows a conversation over tea between the two reminding them the fleeting nature of life and the beauty that once existed by travelling through some part of Hong Kong’s history.
Director biography
Zeed is a Hong Kong–born Indian filmmaker whose work stands out for its emotional depth and lyrical visual storytelling. With a background in pharmaceutical sciences and fluency in English, Tamil, Malayalam, and Hindi, Zeed brings a unique cultural and intellectual richness to his films.
His short The Buraq That Can’t Fly blends themes of cultural displacement and imagination with a poetic realism, earning a 5-star review from Short Films Matter. In Dead With a Side of Saudade, Zeed shifts gears, exploring grief and transience with subtle humor and emotional restraint. The film won at the Kollywood International Film Festival, received a Special Mention at the Panorama Film Festival of Bengaluru (2024), and was a semi-finalist at other festivals.
Zeed was first recognized in 2014 as a finalist at the India Mobile Film Festival for his short minutes. Since then, he has written, directed, and acted in several independent projects, including the anthology Fallen Leaves, Broken Lighters, which premiered in Hong Kong. There, he directed the segment Dead With a Side of Saudade and acted in Fleeting Impermanence. He also appears in the HK feature film The Sunny Side of the Street (2022).
Now developing his debut feature film, Zeed continues to explore the in-between spaces of realism and fantasy, tradition and reinvention — always with a voice that feels both intimate and universal.
