Journalist / Yedioth Ahronoth, Ynet
Amir Kaminer (born 1960) grew up in the rural community of Avihayil at Israel’s Hefer Valley which his grandparents (who were veterans of the Jewish Legion that fought in World War I) had founded. Kaminer studied Film Theory at Tel Aviv University’s Department of Film and Television Studies between 1982-1985 and twice made it into the Dean’s Honours List. During his studies, he became one of the founders of the now-defunct magazine, Films (‘sratim’).
In 1986, Kaminer had a short stint working for the long-defunct weekly magazine Lahiton (‘Hit maker’) and in the summer of that year, joined the Yedioth Ahronoth media group as their in-house film critic. Since then, he has devoted himself to injecting camp, cult, trash, and fringe culture into all corners of Israeli society. In addition, he is also a regular fashion and culinary writer and critic. In the year 2000, Kaminer began covering the Cannes Film Festival on a regular basis and has since become one of the figures most synonymous with the festival. His festival sojourns, however, are by no means limited to the French Riviera and he has been known to cover many other festivals all over the world on a regular basis including Venice, Berlin, Marrakesh, Rome, Karlovy Vary, Zurich, and Macau.
Throughout his career, Kaminer has interviewed the industry’s top tier directors (including Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Jane Campion, Pedro Almodóvar, Roman Polanski, Ethan and Joel Coen, Quentin Tarantino, Lars von Trier, and Bernardo Bertolucci to name but a few) and sat down with some of the entertainment world’s biggest names (including Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman, Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johansson, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Sandra Bullock, Penelope Cruz, and many more.)
In the early ‘90s, Kaminer was considered one of the symbols of Tel Aviv’s hip ‘Sheinkin’ [trendy shopping and café street – EE] and local magazine culture, and even made a handful of cameos playing himself in numerous films set around Tel Aviv’s nightlife scene including Tel Aviv Stories, Amazing Grace, Strangers in the Night, and Song of the Siren. He also starred in Moshe Zimerman’s An Evening without Naama which was based on a story from Kaminer’s own partying days.