Mohammed Al - Daradji was born in 1978 in Baghdad and after fleeing to Holland, he continued his studies at the Media Academy in Hilversem. After completing his studies, specialising in Camera, he worked for a variety of media production companies. His passion for cinema led him to join the Master of Arts course in Cinematography at Leeds Metropolitan University School of Art.

After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003, Al-Daradji travelled back to his homeland of Iraq, after having fled the country to Holland while studying Theatre Directing at the Fine Art Institute in Baghdad, following the murder of his politically active cousin in 1995. On his arrival, he found heartbreaking chaos and was particularly disturbed with the sight of numerous psychiatric patients wandering on the streets, as the hospitals were being destroyed be the bombings. The experience served as the germ for Mohamed’s first feature film, “Ahlaam,” which he filmed on location in Iraq in 2004 under brutal circumstances. “I would like to bring the subject very close to the audience with an artistic point of view,” he says. Devotion to realism can have its perils. Mohamed and three of his crew members were kidnapped twice in the same day, by Iraqi insurgents who held them at gun point with bags over their heads ready to execute them.

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