HASSAN DAWAR
Hassan Dawar | Commercial & Advertising Film Director
Founder, CEO & Director of Ten Eighty Films
Hassan Dawar is a commercial and advertising film director, filmmaker and Founder of Ten Eighty Films. Based in Pakistan and working internationally, he is known for cinematic brand storytelling, music-driven films and large-scale commercial productions.
Working across commercials, branded entertainment, music and sports storytelling, Dawar has developed a visual language built around cinematic imagery, performance, sound and emotionally driven narratives.
His portfolio spans campaigns for leading global and regional brands including Coca-Cola, Sprite, KFC, Pepsi, Knorr, Glow & Lovely, Samsung, Nestle, MG, TCL and Peshawar Zalmi.
A Career Built Behind the Camera
Dawar began his filmmaking journey in 2009, developing his craft through commercial and narrative productions before establishing Ten Eighty Films in 2013.
Over more than a decade behind the camera, his work has evolved from conventional advertising into increasingly ambitious cinematic storytelling combining the scale of commercial filmmaking with the visual language and emotional construction of cinema.
Rather than being defined by a single genre or aesthetic, his work moves between humour, youth culture, sport, music, performance and cinematic spectacle while maintaining a recognisable attention to image, sound and craft.
Selected Work
Dawar’s selected commercial work includes Sprite “Thand Macha,” KFC “Yaari,” Coca-Cola “Zalima,” Pepsi Black, Knorr Blazin’ featuring Young Stunners, the Glow & Lovely launch campaign, Samsung Galaxy, MG Cyberster and a continuing body of work for Peshawar Zalmi.
His recent work reflects an increasing emphasis on films that operate beyond conventional advertising using music, narrative, production design and cinematic world-building to create brand experiences designed to live across television, digital platforms and culture.
Seven Years of Peshawar Zalmi
One of the defining creative collaborations of Dawar’s career has been his continuing work with Peshawar Zalmi.
Across seven consecutive seasons, he has directed the franchise’s anthem films and expanded them from conventional cricket music videos into increasingly ambitious pieces of visual storytelling.
The body of work includes:
Pukhtoon Core | 2020
Kingdom | 2021
Aaya Zalmi | 2022
Raalal | 2023
Yama | 2024
Zalmi X Legacy | 2025
Rise of Zalmi | 2026
Across the series, Dawar has worked with leading Pakistani actors, musicians and cricketers while exploring different visual identities for the franchise from cultural storytelling and abstraction to narrative filmmaking and large scale spectacle.
The collaboration has become a continuing creative experiment: seven films, seven distinct visual worlds and an evolving interpretation of what a sports anthem can be.
The Hassan Dawar Visual Language
At the centre of Dawar’s work is a belief that advertising does not have to feel disposable.
Light, performance, production design, cinematography, music and post-production are treated as parts of the same narrative rather than separate technical departments.
That approach has gradually produced something harder to manufacture: a recognisable visual sensibility.
The ambition is not simply to make advertising look cinematic. It is to create images and moments audiences remember after the brand message has ended.
Ten Eighty Films
Dawar founded Ten Eighty Films in 2013 as an independent production house built around cinematic advertising and visual storytelling.
Based in Pakistan and working with agencies, brands, artists and production collaborators, Ten Eighty Films develops and produces commercials, brand films, music-driven projects and cinematic content for television and digital platforms.
Dawar serves as Founder, CEO and Director, remaining closely involved in the creative development and execution of the company’s films.
Beyond the Benchmark
More than a decade into his career, Dawar’s focus has increasingly shifted from establishing a style to challenging it.
The difficulty of developing a recognisable visual language is that eventually the work itself becomes the benchmark. Each new film carries the expectation created by the one before it.
For Dawar, that pressure has become part of the process.
The objective is no longer simply to repeat what worked before, but to continue finding new visual territories, new formats and eventually larger narrative opportunities beyond traditional advertising.