Roland Dahwen is a filmmaker, writer, performer, and visual artist. He studied literature and translation before starting to work in documentary and narrative film.

At the age of twenty, he made his first short film, There are no birds in the nests of yesterday, about the whistling language of the Canary Islands, which convinced him that he wanted to pursue filmmaking. He then worked at a documentary film company, helping to make and distribute films about immigration and citizenship.

He worked on short films and video installations for several years, before directing his first narrative feature film, Borrufa.

Roland Dahwen has exhibited film and video work in Cuba, the Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, India, Germany, Canada, Turkey, and the US. He has given artist talks at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Reed College, Pacific Northwest College of Art, King School Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil).

His work has been supported by Oregon Arts Commission, Portland Art Museum Center for an Untold Tomorrow, Regional Arts and Culture Council, the Cooley Gallery, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Seattle Art Museum. In 2018, he was awarded the Oregon Media Arts Fellowship. In 2020, he was a finalist for the Betty Bowen Award. He is Co-Director of Outer Voice, an artist-led collective in Portland.