Film director, writer. He was born in 1964 in Famagusta, Cyprus. After graduating from Famagusta Namık Kemal High School, he graduated from Istanbul Boğaziçi University, Department of Business Administration in 1988. In 1994, he completed his education with a master's degree in cultural studies at the University of Warwick, England. He also attended a course on independent filmmaking organized by the Hollywood Film Institute in London in 1991.

Derviş Zaim lives in Istanbul and teaches cinema at Bilgi University and Boğaziçi University. Derviş Zaim, who started his film studies with his experimental video Hang the Camera in 1991, then directed a TV documentary, Stone Around the Mosque. Derviş Zaim, who worked as a TV director and writer between 1992 and 1995, also directed many television programs.

In 1996, he won many awards in Turkey and abroad with his first film, "Troops in a Coffin". Zaim continued his film career with the films Elephants and Grass (2000), Mud (2003), Waiting for Heaven (2006), Nokta (2008), Shadows and Faces (2011) and Revolution (2012).

"Waiting for Heaven", which he made in 2005, is the first film in a trilogy planned by the director. The second of the trilogy is the movie "Dot" in 2008, and the third is the movie "Shadows and Aspects" made in 2010. In 1995, he won the Yunus Nadi Novel Award in Turkey with his first novel, Ares in Wonderland.