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Dreams of Daraa

Hanadi looking at road

Hanadi dreams of a safe home for her family, but that means fleeing Syria with her daughters and finding her kidnapped husband in an international whirlwind.

Series

NETA Presentation

Premiere Date

September 11, 2021

Length

60 minutes

Funding Type

Co-Production

Reilly Dowd

Producer/Director

Reilly is the director and producer of the upcoming feature documentary, Dreams of Daraa. Shot over four years, it follows the journey of a young Syrian mother named Hanadi and her three daughters—first as refugees in Jordan, then as internally displaced people (IDPs) inside Syria, and ultimately, as asylum-seekers in Germany. In 2018, Reilly and Hanadi testified before experts at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva about the war crimes of the Assad Regime. Reilly’s film has received support from the Washington-based Halcyon Arts Lab, a fellowship for emerging artists with bold ideas of how art and creativity can be forces for social change. She was also 1 of 6 filmmakers selected for the Fledgling Engagement Lab, a yearlong program that supports the social impact campaigns of documentaries focused on issues affecting vulnerable populations. Reilly is a 2013 graduate of Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, where she focused her studies on international politics and investigative journalism. Her articles have been published by national news outlets, including Al Jazeera America, ABC News, the Fiscal Times and Inc. She has also worked at SnagFilms (indieWIRE), CNN as well as for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and in the Obama White House Office of Presidential Correspondence. Reilly is currently living in Los Angeles and pursuing her master’s degree in the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. As part of this, she was awarded one of the school’s most prestigious scholarships from the Anna and Ray Romano Family Fund and had the opportunity to direct her first scripted short film, The Last Ride, which is set to premiere in September 2019.

filmmaker Juli Vizza
Juli Vizza

Producer

Juli Vizza is an award-winning producer and editor. They won an Emmy Award for editing the 2002 Winter Olympics at NBC, and has since been working as a producer for nonfiction and fiction film, television, commercials, and music videos. Vizza has produced films that premiered at the Sundance, Berlin, and TriBeCa film festivals, and aired on Showtime and PBS. At Sony Pictures Entertainment, they worked on publicity campaigns for The DaVinci Code for the U.S. and international markets, as well as the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and other films including Stranger Than Fiction, Quantum of Solace and Angels & Demons. Vizza is co-producing and editing the feature length documentary for PBS, Xmas Without China.