Duki Dror

Duki Dror דוקי (צדוק) דרור Duki (Zadok) Dror دوكي درور درويش (born 1963 in Tel Aviv, Israel) is a director, producer and documentary filmmaker whose films deal largely with issues of migration, identity and displacement.

In the early 1950s, Dror's parents fled from their native Iraq for the newly established state of Israel. When Dror's father was 17 he was arrested on charges of political activism and ultimately served five years in prison as a political prisoner. Upon his release, Dror's father was not allowed to stay in Iraq and the family ended up leaving for Israel. Arriving in the newly established state of Israel Dror's parents changed their Arabic family name, Darwish (Arabic for "wandering"), to the name Dror (Hebrew for "freedom"). The story behind Dror's parents' emigration to Israel, and his father's story in particular, informs the central dramatic theme in Dror's personal film diary My Fantasia (2000) which takes place in the Dror's family-owned Menorah factory between the First and Second Gulf War. The history, culture and identity of Arab Jews has also informed a number of Dror's other work including Cafe Noah, his most recent release, Shadow in Baghdad, and a forthcoming film about the Jewish Iraqi war pilot Naji Ibrahim.

Dror studied in the United States at UCLA and is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago. His graduate film, Sentenced to Learn (1993), which tells the story of lifetime inmates in Illinois prisons, was screened in the Pompidou Center in Paris as part of an American Documentary retrospective.

After eight years in the United States, Dror returned to Israel to explore his interest in identity politics and to reveal for audiences the complexities of Israeli identity. Two of Dror's films Café Noah (1996), and Taqasim (1999), exposed the art and work of musicians who immigrated to Israel from Iraq and Egypt during the 1950s.

Dror's films have been internationally recognized at numerous festivals. In 2012, Dror's film on German-Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn Mendelsohn's Incessant Visions received the Golden Award(FILAF d'Or) at the International Art Book and Film Festival (FILAF) in France. In 2006, Dror's film about the Vietnamese boat people who immigrated to Israel, The Journey of Vaan Nguyen, received the Remi Award at Houston Worldfest.

Director

• Sentenced to Learn (1993)
• Radio Daze (1996)
• Warp & Weft (1997)
• Cafe Noah (1997)
• Shenkin - A Street of Faith (1998)
• Stress (1998)
• Taqasim (1999)
• Red Vibes (1999)
• Watchman (2000)
• My Fantasia (2001)
• Raging Dove (2002)
• Mr. Cortisone Happy Days (2004)
• The Journey of Van Nguyen (2005)
• SideWalk (2007)
• Across the River (2009)
• Mendelsohn's Incessant Visions (2011)
• Shadow in Baghdad (2013)

Producer

• Paradise Lost (2003)
• Collaborators (2004)
• A General's Story (2005)
• Seekers (2012)
• Photonovela (2013)

In production

• Revolution Girls (2014)
• Darknet (2015)