Born 1969 in Baghdad. Raised in the Middle East and the Middle West. I make art and media for the age of love and death.

"Chicago-based Iraqi director Usama Alshaibi seems to be one of the most prolific Arab filmmakers in the American independent film scene—and he’s almost certainly the most experimental. Working often in close collaboration with his wife Kristie, Alshaibi has jump-started the canon of what we might term transgressive Arab-American film".-Dangerous Minds.

"…his films frequently examine themes of sexuality, desire, ‘perversion’, race, and gender. His work is characterized by a combination of dark humour and a gleeful celebration of what is deemed by mainstream culture to be deviant behavior…" -Jack Sargeant (from Deathtripping the Extreme Underground)

"Usama Alshaibi… demon engineer, who like an alchemist transmuted my slovenly, drossy tapes into gold." -Studs Terkel