He was born in Haifa on October 11th 1950. His father was German, an architect of the Bauhaus art movement who had moved to Palestine in 1934 escaping from the Nazism. His mother was a Palestinian with Russian parents. Amos was a reservist during the Kippur War in 1973 (this would be the subject of one of his films later on) and he survived after a helicopter crash. While flying on his helicopter he made his first shootings using a Super 8 camera. He started to work for the Israeli State Television but when he gave his critical and political opinion – for example in the documentary Casa (House) in 1977 - his work was censored. That documentary was about some suspect transfers of ownership of an Arabian house in Jerusalem. In 1982 also Diario di guerra started some dispute because the subject was the Israeli campaign in Lebanon. Due to these restrictions of freedom, Amos decided to move to Berkeley in the USA where he finished the studies he had interrupted in Haifa. After his graduation in 1986 he moved to Paris. In the meanwhile he started his partially autobiographical trilogy about emigrants and exile: Esther, Berlin Jerusalem and Golem. These are also his first fiction films, but during his whole career Gitai alternated documentaries to films. Among these there is also a music film about the Eurythmics during their tour in Japan, Brand New Day. Homesickness appeared, though, especially because his home country represented a source of culture. While travelling around the world, Amos has been appreciated as a great filmmaker, awarded everywhere while in Israel critics have never been lenient. His wife Rivka and his children Ben and Keren lived in France, in Paris. In 1995 he started making fiction films also in Israel. The new trilogy, which was completed in 1999, included Devarim (The inventory) shot in Tel Aviv; Yom Yom (Day by day) about Haifa and Kadosh about Jerusalem. His films have been continuously shown in Venice and in Cannes, both in the contest and not, and a constant appreciation by the critics is always present, with no doubts. In 2000 he made the autobiographical Kippur about the time when he was a soldier. Other important films are Eden of 2001 and Kedma of 2002. So far his filmography counts about sixty works, short films, documentaries and full-length films included.
