Amos Gitai

Amos Gitai (Hebrew: עמוס גיתאי) is an Israeli artist and filmmaker, born 11 October 1950 in Haifa, Israel.

Gitai's work was presented in several major retrospectives in Pompidou Center in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Lincoln Center in New York, and the British Film Institute in London. To date, Amos Gitai has created over 90 works of art, including a wide variety of formats such as feature and short films, fiction and documentaries, experimental work, television productions, installations and theater works.

Between 1999 and 2017 eleven of his films participated in the Cannes Film Festival for the Palme d'Or as well as The Venice International Film Festival for the Golden Lion award.

He has worked with Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau, Natalie Portman, Hana Laszlo, Yael Abecassis, Samuel Fuller, Hanna Schygulla, Annie Lennox, Rosamund Pike, Barbara Hendricks, Léa Seydoux, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Irene Jacob, Henri Alekan, Mathieu Amalric, Pippo Delbono Renato Berta, Nurith Aviv, Éric Gautier and more. Since 2000 he has been collaborating with the French screenwriter Marie-José Sanselme.

He has received several awards, including the Roberto Rossellini Prize (2005), the Leopard of Honor at the Locarno International Film Festival (2008), the Robert Bresson Prize (2013), the Paradjanov Prize (2014), and the Lucchino Visconti Prize (2021). He is a Commander des Arts and Letters and a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (2017). In 2018, Amos Gitai was elected professor of artistic creation at the Collège de France, with a series of nine lectures on cinema, followed by a symposium.

The work of Amos Gitai has nearly 90 titles, made over approximately 40 years. To these must be added video installations, theatre productions and books. His work is indeed varied, but this diversity is extremely coherent. Over the years, travels, struggles, exile, encounters, Amos Gitaï articulates and re-articulates works which, in their shimmering, never cease to respond to and echo each other. He continues to explore new narrative and stylistic avenues, always in relation to contemporary reality, even when the narrative takes a detour into the historical or mythological past.

Amos Gitai has often spoken about the civic role of artists in society: "Sometimes art acts with a delay, preserving memory, the memory that those in power would like to erase because they call for obedience and do not want to be disturbed, they do not want dissent. But if artists remain true to their inner voice, they produce work that travels through time."