In 2009 he joined Vice Media (then VBS.tv) in New York, working in editorial and production. In 2010 he moved to Moscow, where he headed promotional and interstitial content at the Dozhd television channel. Hasanov went on to take part in the Berlinale Talents and EAVE Producers workshops. Rufat Hasanov first attracted international attention in cinema in 2013 with the feature film 'Chameleon', made together with Elvin Adigozal. The film received a Golden Leopard nomination at the Locarno Film Festival. He has worked on high-profile projects in collaboration with directors such as Bakur Bakuradze, Natalia Merkulova and Alexey Chupov. His second film, 'Island Within' (2020), won the Best Director award at the Sarajevo Film Festival, received the International Jury Prize at the New Iranian Films Festival (Festival Nouvelles Images Persanes), and was Azerbaijan's submission for Best International Feature Film at the 94th Academy Awards. From 2014 he worked as a director at the 'Azerbaijanfilm' studio. In 2019 he became CEO of Debut Film Studios, where he launched InterAct, a film lab supporting production, post-production, distribution and financing for emerging filmmakers. In 2020 he was appointed head of the Cinematography Department (later Audiovisual and Interactive Media) at the Azerbaijani Ministry of Culture, oversaw the creation of ARKA (the Azerbaijan Film Agency), served as acting executive director from 2022 to 2023, and founded the country's first national film commission, 'Filming Azerbaijan'. Since 2023 he has worked at Bazelevs Company, the Hollywood studio founded by Timur Bekmambetov, on the innovative Screenlife format. In 2025 he received a fellowship from the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington. Starting as a guest instructor at Rangeley Lakes Regional School in Maine in 2008, he has led workshops at the Summer Media School in Lithuania (2015) and given training at the Azerbaijan State University of Culture and Arts and at the YARAT Contemporary Art Space in Baku.
