Duki Dror

Duki Dror (born: Tel Aviv , Israel , 1963 ) is a director, scriptwriter and a documentary filmmaker who deals with issues of migration, identity and displacement. Dror’s parents fled from Baghdad in the early 1950’s to Israel . In the newly established state they changed their Arabic family name Darwish, to the Hebrew name Dror (Freedom). Prior to this, Dror’s father was a political prisoner in Iraq for 5 years. His story became the dramatic theme in Dror’s personal film diary My Fantasia (2000) which takes place in the family owned Menora factory between two Gulf wars. Dror studies in UCLA and is a graduate of Colombia Collage Chicago . His graduate film, Sentenced to Learn (1993), which tells the story of life time 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 the politics of identities and to reveal the complexity of Israeli identity. Two films Café Noah (1996), and Taqasim (1999), exposed the art and work of musicians who immigrated to Israel from Iraq and Egypt during the 50’s. In 1996 he made Radio Daze – the peculiar life of Rivka Solarsky, a radio-quiz-show-star, that became a critical reflection of the “consumer-craze” of Israeli society. In 1998 he collaborated with the Palestinian director – Rashid Mashrawi on “Stress” - an experimental documentary in two parts which brings out inner emotions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his film Red Vibes (1998), Dror follows the punk-rock group Ausweiss, whose members immigrated to Israel from Russia and aspire to spread the Black Communism theory. In 2002, Raging Dove , a film which tells the story of Johar Lashin , a Palestinian born Israeli, who strives to create an identity. The film won first prize in the Docaviv competition and distributed world wide. In 2003 Dror initiated and produced Paradise Lost , a film directed by Ibtisam Mara’ana - exposing the story of an Arab woman living between conservative and modern environments. The next year Dror created Mr. Cortisone Happy Days (2004) with Shlomi Shir who documented the process of coping and eventually dying from cancer. The film was a winner of the ”Audience Award” at EBS Seoul Documentary film festival and “Gandhi Award” at Documenta Madrid. The Journey of Vaan Nguyen , directed by Duki Dror in 2005, tells the story of Vietnamese refugees who arrived by boats to Israel in the late 70’s. These ‘boat people’ built a temporary home for themselves in Israel and now when they want to return to Vietnam, their children face an identity conflict. This film was the opening film at EBS Seoul Documentary Film Festival and participated in many festivals around the world, among them the Jerusalem Film Festival and IDFA in Amsterdam. Dror’s latest is the experimental-doc Side Walk (2007), a camera voyage that follows kids on their way to school and back home. It was awarded the "Best Cinematography" in Docaviv Film Festival. Upcoming films by Duki Dror is “Letters of an Architect”, about modernist architect Erich Mendelsohn and "Positive Story" - about Zionism and HIV. Both films are expected to be released in 2009.¹