Amos Gitaï

Amos Gitaï is an artist and filmmaker. He was born to Munio Weinraub, an architect trained at the Bauhaus, and Efratia Margalit, an intellectual and teacher. He holds a degree in Architecture from the Technion in Haifa, Israel, and a Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.

To date, Gitaï has created over ninety works of art, spanning a wide variety of formats including feature-length and short films, fiction and documentaries, experimental work, television productions, installations, and theater plays.

His work has been presented in several major retrospectives around the world: Lincoln Center and Museum of Modern Art (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), British Film Institute (London), Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Barcelona, Vienna, Mexico…

Eleven of his films have competed for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

He has worked with Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau, Natalie Portman, Yael Abecassis, Samuel Fuller, Hanna Schygulla, Annie Lennox, Barbara Hendricks, Léa Seydoux, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Henri Alekan, Renato Berta, Nurith Aviv, Éric Gautier and more.

He has received many prestigious awards, including the Leopard of Honor at the Locarno International Film Festival (2008), the Roberto Rossellini Prize (2005), the Robert Bresson Prize (2013), and the Paradjanov Prize (2014).

He was bestowed with the Legion of Honor (2017) and the Grande Ufficiale dell’Ordine della Stella d’Italia (2019).

In 2018, Amos Gitaï was elected professor to the Chair of Artistic Creation at the Collège de France, where he delivered a series of twelve lectures on cinema.

In spring 2023, at La Colline, he will create a theatrical adaptation of his documentary trilogy House, a multilingual show which will then be performed at the Barbican (London), the Festspiele (Berlin), the Teatro Arnetine (Rome), as part of the RomaEuropa festival, and soon in Madrid. 

In 2024, two of his films were presented in the official selection of major international film festivals:  Shikun in the Berlinale and Why War in the official selection of the Venice Film Festival.