Mohamed Al-Daradji

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Mohamed Al-Daradji (born 1978, in Baghdad, Iraq)^[1] is an Iraqi Dutch film director. Al-Daradji is a dual Dutch-Iraqi citizen.^[2] He studied theatre directing in Baghdad and fled to The Netherlands in 1995, where he specialised as a cameraman. Later he graduated with an MA in cinematography in Leeds. He created many several short films and commercials. One of his first features was Ahlaam,^[3]which took him four months to film in 2004, in Baghdad while the war was going on and it was very difficult to film as electricity would often cut off from time to time. Near to the end of filming, he claims that he and three members of his crew were kidnapped but managed to escape from being killed by insurgents, who accused them of making a propaganda film supporting the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. The captors were preparing to shoot them before they fled from the sound of police sirens. On the same day, they were said to have been abducted again from a Baghdad hospital by another group of gunmen who beat them up and then turned them over to the U.S. military, who held them in harsh conditions for six days on suspicion they were filming insurgent attacks for Al Qaida.^[2]