The Amos Gitai Collection
ChaiFlicks is proud to present a month-long curated series of award-winning films from the preeminent Israeli filmmaker Amos Gitai.
Amos Gitai (born October 1950, Haifa) is a French-Israeli filmmaker, internationally known for his documentaries and feature films on the Middle East, the Israeli–Arab conflict, and the Holocaust memory in Europe. Between 1999 and 2018 ten of his films were entered in the Cannes Film Festival for the Palme d'Or as well as the Mostra, the Venice International Film Festival for the Golden Lion award. He has worked with Arthur Miller, Juliette Binoche, Jeanne Moreau, Natalie Portman, Yael Abecassis, Samuel Fuller, Hanna Schygulla, Annie Lennox, Barbara Hendricks, Léa Seydoux, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Liron Levo, Hanna Laslo, Ronit Elkabetz, Juliano Mer-Khamis, Mathieu Amalric, Henri Alekan, Renato Berta, Nurith Aviv, Éric Gautier, Caroline Champetier, Isabelle Ingold and more.
Amos Gitai was born to Munio Weinraub (Gitai), an architect formed at the pre-war German Bauhaus art school, and to Efratia Munschik Margalit Weinraub (Gitai), an intellectual, storyteller and a teacher. He holds a degree in Architecture from the Technion in Haifa and a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, Gitai had to interrupt his architecture studies as he was called up to reserve service as part of a helicopter rescue crew. While serving, he shot 8mm footage of the fighting, claiming this served as his entry into the world of film making. (Stanford University)
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Free Zone
Rebecca (Natalie Portman), an American who has been living in Jerusalem for a few months now, has just broken off her engagement. She gets into a cab driven by Hanna (Hanna Laslo), an Israeli. But Hanna is on her way to Jordan, to the Free Zone, to pick up a large sum of money that "the American"...
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One Day You'll Understand
Featuring a stunning performance from legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau ("Jules et Jim"), acclaimed Israeli director Amos Gitaï ("Promised Land") presents a meditation on memory, identity, and the reconciliation that follows a French businessman’s growing obsession with the secrets of his fa...
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Kadosh
Amos Gitai's KADOSH takes viewers inside the Mea Sherim quarter of Jerusalem, an enclave of the ultra-Orthodox almost never seen on the screen. Here, for ten years, the pious Rivka (Yael Abecassis, "Live and Become") has devoted herself to her husband Meir (Yoram Hattab), but their marriage remai...
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Alila
Warning - Contains Sexual Content | In Alila, director Amos Gitai (Kedma, Kadosh), "Israel's one-man new wave," (The Village Voice) has created an "engaging, subtly arresting drama" (Time Out New York) that examines the lives of a half dozen residents of a run-down Tel-Aviv apartment building. Th...