Mohanad Salahat

Mohanad Salahat is an independent Palestinian / Swedish director, producer and script writer born in Nablus in 1981. In 2001 he moved to Jordan where he studied law, and worked in the Arabic media and tv series industry. After completing his studies in 2005 he worked with television production for a company who was in the forefront of creating and releasing television series at that time. The series were broadcasted in the mainstream media all over the middle east. In addition to this Mohanad was working with developing TV-documentaries, mainly for Al Jazeera. In 2009 he started freelancing as well as working as a media consultant and script advisor.
In the spring of 2012 he moved to Sweden where he shortly thereafter created a short film named “Letter To Obama” in cooperation with Laika Film & TV in Stockholm. Following this film he became a co-owner of the Swedish production company Laika together with Andreas Rocksen and William Johansson. He also worked as a director at the company from 2013–2016. His short film, Letter to Obama, has been screened in about 90 film festivals worldwide, and won several prizes, notably the 2nd place winner of the Filmaka Reset Competition in Los Angeles.
In 2016, he was one of the Swedish co-producers of “Beauty and the Dogs” (2017), a French-Tunisian drama film, directed by Kaouthar Ben Hania. It was shown in the section Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival 2017.
His later films include the documentaries The Witness (2014) 50min , The Tyrant's Friend (2015) 50min, The Swedes Captive in Gaza (2016) 25min, Tal AL Zaatar: Revealing Secrets: (2018) 50min, The assassination of Elie Hobeika: (2019 50min). All of the mentioned productions have been screened on Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera World, Al Jazeera Documentary, Swedish National Television (SVT), and at film festivals worldwide.
From 2018 – March 2020, Mohanad worked with several production companies and film festivals in Sweden, Turkey, Qatar and Palestine as a freelance director and producer. Other than that he also frequently works as a consultant with a number of media companies, organizations, and film festivals.
In 2021 Mohanad established his own film and production company in Malmö, Sweden; Sunbird Films and is daily working as an independent filmmaker and writer in Europe and Arab countries.