Gideon Raff Biography

Gideon Gidi Raff is a film and television director, screenwriter, and writer from Israel. He is most known for the award-winning Israeli television drama series Prisoners of War (which he developed, wrote, and directed) and its renowned US version, Homeland, both of which he created, wrote, and directed (for which he won two Primetime Emmy Awards in 2012). He earned a degree in Film from Tel Aviv University after serving three years as a paratrooper in the Israeli army. During the dot-com bubble, he was in charge of content for a start-up and published a weekly column on his experiences in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv. The pieces were compiled into a book called Diary of a Start-Up on the Road to Mecca. Raff relocated to Los Angeles in 2003 to pursue a masters degree in directing at the American Film Institute. The Babysitter, his graduating short film, screened at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. On the strength of this, director Doug Liman recruited him as director's assistant on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's 2005 picture Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Raff made his feature-length directorial debut in 2007 with the psychological thriller The Killing Floor (which he also co-wrote and co-produced). In 2008, he directed the horror thriller Train, starring Thora Birch. Raff returned to Israel to work on Prisoners of War, a television drama series he conceived, scripted, and directed. The series went on to become Israel's highest-rated drama of all time, winning numerous Israeli television prizes along the way. Even before the production of Prisoners of War began, the rights to create an American version of the series were sold to 20th Century Fox Television based solely on the merit of the screenplay. This culminated in the critically acclaimed series Homeland, created by former 24 producers and writers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa in collaboration with Raff and shown on cable channel Showtime in the fall of 2011. Raff served as an executive producer for the US program and co-wrote the premiere episode, in addition to translating the original Hebrew screenplays into English. In 2011, Raff returned to Israel to film the second season of Prisoners of War (which he again wrote and directed). The new season did not premiere in Israel until October 2012, barely two weeks after the second season of Homeland premiered in the United States. Raff was rumored to have sold the pilot for a new TV drama series, Tyrant, to cable TV channel FX in December 2012. The story focuses around an ordinary American family caught up in the turmoil of the Middle East. Raff came up with the idea and authored the pilot screenplay. Raff and Heroes creator Tim Kring signed a six-episode contract with USA Network in November 2013 for Dig, an archaeological thriller about an American FBI agent stationed in Jerusalem. The television series is set to air in late 2014. Raff is a proponent of animal rights. He had previously been a vegetarian until becoming a vegan in 2007. Raff wrote to both the United States Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, and the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense in 2012 as part of a PETA campaign to oppose the use of live animals to teach army medics in combat operations.

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