Amos Gitai Movies and Career Information

Amos Gitai (born 11 October 1950 in Haifa, Israel) is an Israeli film director. Born in 1950 in Haifa, to architect Munio Weinraub and Zionist activist Efratia Margalit. His father was architect of the pre-war Bauhaus movement in Germany. Amos studied architecture in Haifa and at the University of California, Berkeley. He was called up to serve in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. As part of a helicopter rescue crew, he shot 8 mm footage of the fighting. He claims this served as his entry into the world of filmmaking. On his birthday, Gitai's helicopter was shot down by a Syrian missile on the Golan Heights. This experience had a great effect on his life and forms the basis of his film Kippur, an autobiographical depiction of his war service. Amos Weinraub changed his name to Amos Gitai. Gitai began his career directing documentaries that showcased his increasingly leftist politics. Field Diary, a critical look at the Lebanon War, was partially censored by the military in 1983, leading Gitai to leave Israel for France, where he would base his working life for the next decade, until the electoral victory of Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo Accords convinced him to return to Israel