Amos Mokadi was born in Vienna in 1931 to Yehoshua Brandstatter and Margot Klausner.
In 1932 he traveled with his mother (his father having been a halutz in Palestine since 1909) to Tel Aviv, but grew up in kibbutz Mishmar ha'Emek. In 1948 the young Mokadi – then still Brnadstatter – took part in defending his kibbutz. He completed his high-school studies at "Tichon Hadash" in Tel Aviv, and after his military service sailed to London to study at the Central School of Speech Therapy and Dramatic Art, where he won the William Poel Memorial Prize jointly with Judi Dench in 1957.

In the first half of his working life, Mokadi played, directed and wrote for the stage and the screen both in Israel and in England (including two coast-to-coast tours of America).
His film"Repeat Dive" won the Best Film Prize in Israel for 1981, and participated in the official competition
in the Berlin Film Festival of 1982.

Mokadi founded and art-directed three theatres –
in Israel, the Shacharit ("Dawn") Youth Theatre (with Talia Shapira, Ezra Dagan, Yossi Ronen and Gad Kenar); and in England, the Exeter Northcott Youth Theatre and the Act Inn Theatre Club in London, where he presented over 30 original plays.

Mokadi is a veteran peace activist. He recently directed films on the subject of cooperation among children from Israel, Palestine and other conflict areas around the Mediterranean. The first one, "Flowers of Hope" , is about two classes of nine-year olds from Palestine and Israel, working the land together for a whole year. The second, "Ekechiria", is about 200 children from conflict areas who meet in Olympia and Delphi, Greece, to compete for peace. About the former, which is being shown in hundreds of schools worldwide, the writer David Grossman wrote: "…The warm and natural touch between one child and another, one human-being and another, though they are Israelis and Palestinians who have been enemies for a while… viewing this film, my heart grew heavy with the realization of the extent to which our reality has become mutilated by hate. But at the same time I also felt how close – practically within reach – is the forgiving and generous seed, still alive in us…"

Among Mokadi's recent literary works is the trilogy
"Life of a Prophet" about which the naturalist Nissim Krispil wrote (Ma'ariv, 9.6.95): "…One of the greatest literary works that has been written in Israel in the last decade;"
"My Sister Ilea", telling of an eight-year-old conversing with her recently departed seventeen-year-old sister; and the "New Jewish Paradigm" , which Rabbi Menachem Froman of Tekoa has labeled "…a courageous appraisal, which intertwines Judaism with the rest of the world."
"Just Live!" is Mokadi's latest published novel. It tells of the exploits of his father (under a different name), who early last century settled in the Galilee and joined one of the first kibbutzim in the Valley of Jesreel – the former under the Ottomans and the latter under the British rule of Palestine.

In 2006, Mokadi translated, diredted and played in Shakespeare's last play, "The Tempest" , about which Israeli-Palestinian production Gad Kenar, the Head of Drama in Tel Aviv University, has written: "…One of the most deeply-cultural, subtle and enjoyable experiences I have had in an Israeli theatre in a long time."

Mokadi's latest novel is "Angels on the Ceiling", about the fortunes of an Israeli and a Palestinian who discover a common mother in Berlin.

Mokadi, who lives with Bracha Citrin in Tel Aviv, has
five children.