Duki Dror

Duki Dror is an Israeli documentary filmmaker whose films deal with migration, identity and displacement.

born 1963Documentaries on migration and identityThe film Raging DoveFilms on Arab Jewish culture

Born: 28 September 1963, Tel Aviv
Occupation: film director, screenwriter, director
Education: Columbia College Chicago

Duki Dror was born in 1963 in Tel Aviv

Zadok "Duki" Dror was born in Tel Aviv on September 28, 1963. His parents left Iraq for Israel in the early 1950s. His father had been jailed in Iraq for 5 years as a political prisoner, and in Israel the family changed its name from Darwish to Dror.

Dror studied at UCLA in the United States and graduated from the film program of Columbia College Chicago. His graduation film, Sentenced to Learn (1993), followed lifetime inmates in Illinois prisons and was shown at the Pompidou Center in Paris.

After returning to Israel, he made films on Mizrahi identity and Arab Jewish culture, including Cafe Noah (1996) and My Fantasia (2000), a personal diary about his father. In 1998 he made Stress with Palestinian director Rashid Masharawi, an Israeli-Palestinian coproduction.

His film Raging Dove (2002), about boxer Johar Abu Lashin, won the first prize at Docaviv. Later films include The Journey of Vaan Nguyen, Mendelsohn's Incessant Visions, Shadow in Baghdad (2013) and Partner with the Enemy (2014). He won the Israeli Television Academy Award in 2020 and the German Television Academy Award in 2024.