Filmmaker
Amos Gitai is an Israeli filmmaker. He holds a degree in architecture from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, and a Ph.D. in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.
During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Mr. Gitai was forced to interrupt his studies as he was called up to the reserve service as part of a helicopter rescue crew and was wounded when his helicopter was hit by a Syrian missile. During his missions, he used a Super 8 camera to document the war and subsequently embarked on his career as a filmmaker.
He directed “House,” his first documentary, in 1980, which was censored by Israeli television. After his “Field Diary” documentary was censored again in 1982, he moved to Paris, where he made his first fiction films. He returned to Israel after Yitzhak Rabin as was elected prime minister for the second time in 1992. He developed a prolific body of work, including numerous fictional and documentary films, as well as exhibitions, plays, books and lectures.
Mr. Gitai has created more than 90 works for film and theater, as well as installations, artists' books, experimental work and television productions. His work has been presented in major retrospectives in the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center in New York, and the British Film Institute in London. His films have featured at the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice International Film Festival.
He is the recipient of several prestigious awards, such as the 2005 Roberto Rossellini Prize, the Leopard of Honor at the 2008 Locarno International Film Festival, the Robert Bresson Prize at the 2013 Venice Film Festival and the Luchino Visconti Prize at the 2021 Ischia Global Film and Music Festival. Among other honors, he is an Officier des Arts et des Lettres and Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur of France and a Grand Officer of the Order of the Star of Italy. In 2018, he was elected to the chair of artistic creation at the Collège de France in Paris.
