Israeli film director Amos Gitai was born October 11, 1950 in Haifa, Israel. Born to an architect father Gitai was following in his footsteps when he was drafted into the service to fight the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Little did he know that the footage of the war that he would shoot from his 8 mm camera would serve as the beginning of a career in filmmaking and the basis for his film Kippur that was a depiction of his experience in the war?

Gitai's political documentaries took a leftist position with a critical view of the Lebanon War and were censored forcing him to leave Israel. This event caused him to move to France where he lived for ten years until he returned to Israel.

Some of the films he directed while in France gave him great acknowledgment and acclaim. One of those films was Golem and another Berlin/Jerusalem, a fictional story about two women in the 1930's who travel to Jerusalem out of a passion for Zionist politics and the mythology of Jerusalem.

Gitai earned a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley in 1986 but returned to Israel following his studies. With a degree and his French film connections combined he created a series of successful films, which were an attack on the place of religion in Israeli society. These films caused great controversy but did gain him a lot of attention in the filmmaking community.
Because Israeli cinema is currently in the middle of a major change, Gitai's work and international reputation is finally coming of age after all these years with his historical and political films now gaining even more popularity with Israeli audiences. The two most prominent films with major events in Israel are Kadosh and Kippur. Some still see his work as to European for Israel's taste. His films are still more popular in Europe than they are in Israel.