GITAI, AMOS

GITAI, AMOS (1950–), Israeli film director. Gitai made over 46 movies and regularly showed his films at prestigious international festivals, where they often won awards. He triumphed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 when Hanna Laslo, the leading actress in his film Free Zone, won the Best Actress Award, the first time an Israeli actress has been so honored. Born in Haifa, Gitai studied architecture and earned a doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. In the 1970s, while studying in the U.S., he began making documentaries, then moved to Paris for more than ten years. He continued to direct documentaries and also began making features. His films usually focus on Jewish history or crises in Israel and express his strong left-wing perspective. His 1989 film, Berlin Jerusalem, a look at friends in Germany in the 1920s who move to Palestine, won the critics' prize at the Venice International Film Festival. In 1993, he returned to Israel. While he is celebrated abroad, his films generally receive a less enthusiastic reaction in Israel. His 1999 film, Kadosh, is about ultra-Orthodox sisters; in 2000, he drew on his own experiences in the Yom Kippur War in the film, Kippur; and his 2002 film, Kedma, examines the fate of a group of immigrants to Palestine just before the establishment of the state. His other films include Yom Yom (1998), Eden (2001), and Promised Land (2004). (Hannah Brown (2nd ed.)