Amos Gitai holds a degree in Architecture from Technion in Haifa and a PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. He was wounded in action during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Intrigued by directing, he made his first film, House, in 1980 and since then his many features and documentaries have brought him widespread international recognition and awards at all the major festivals. Four of his films have competed at Cannes (Kadosh, Kippur, Kedma, Free Zone) and four others at the Mostra in Venice between 1999 and 2010 (Berlin Jérusalem, Eden, Alila, Terre promise). He directed La Guerre des fils de lumière contre les fils des ténèbres (The War of the Children of Light against the Children of Darkness) at the Avignon Festival in 2009, then at the Odéon in Paris in 2010. He has also created video installations, including News from Home, News from House in Berlin’s Kunstwerke in 2006, Citations in Bordeaux in 2009, Traces in Palais de Tokyo in Paris 2010 and in Dessau’s Bauhaus in 2012. There have been many retrospectives devoted to his work, in London (British Film Institute, 1989), Paris (Centre Pompidou, 2003), São Paulo (2004), Berlin (2006), New York (MoMA, 2009), and in Moscow, Tokyo, and Jerusalem. He received the Rossellini Prize in 2005 and 2007 and the Leopard of Honour at Locarno’s festival in 2008, published Mont Carmel (Mount Carmel), Gallimard (2003), Genèses (Genesis) (2009), and his letters to his mother Efratia Gitai in 2011.