Oday Rasheed

Oday Rasheed ( Arabic:عدي رشيد born June 17, 1973) is an Arab-American film director, screenwriter and producer born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq. Rasheed immigrated to New York City in 2012. He has been living and working in Los Angeles since 2022. Rasheed's film debut Underexposure (2005) was “billed as the first feature shot in occupied Baghdad” after the U.S. Invasion of Iraq in 2003 where "Oday Rasheed has taken the term 'guerilla filmmaking' to a whole new level," according to Variety Magazine. Oday Rasheed was born in Baghdad, Iraq. After graduating from high school, he attended but did not graduate from the Institute for Electrical Science, the Institute for Applicable Art and the Faculty for Fine Arts in Baghdad. He went on to work for local newspapers writing film reviews and articles on cinema. In the early 1990s, Rasheed co-founded an experimental art and theater group, later known as Najeen (survivors). The troupe put on performances merging scenes from writers such as Henry Miller and the beat poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg. In the later 1990s, Rasheed went on to produce experimental short films. Oday Rasheed has been particularly concerned about the future of Iraqi cinema and the lack of opportunities available to young filmmakers in his country. As a result he has been engaged in workshops for young filmmakers and in 2008, he co-founded the Iraqi Independent Film Center for young artists. Rasheed immigrated to the United States in 2012, where he was also an artist in residence at the San Francisco Film Society. He has lectured on film studies at universities across the world from Cinémathèque Française in Paris, Georgetown University, New York University and University of California in the United States, as well as at the Japan Foundation Forum, The Council of Foreign Affairs in NY and others. Underexposure, a docufiction produced by Majed Rasheed and Furat Al-Jamil and filmed by cinematographer Ziad Turkey on expired 35mm Kodak film stock, was met with global critical acclaim. Underexposure was the first movie to be filmed in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein and the first Iraqi film in over a decade to not be censored by the Baath party. “Oday sees this as a critical time, in terms of reintroducing culture to their country.