Hanna Azoulay Hasfari is an actress, playwright, screenwriter, and director whose body of work prominently features leitmotifs of gender and identity in Israeli society. Azoulay Hasfari took her first professional steps in theatre and has since played a wide and diverse range of roles on various Israeli theatre stages including the Cameri, Beit Lessin, and Beersheba and Haifa theatres. Highlights of her stage credits include The House of Bernarda Alba, A Trumpet in the Wadi, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, and Valentino. Her TV series credits include Ugly Esti (the Israeli adaptation of Ugly Betty), The Arbitrator, Polishuk, and many more.
As a playwright and screenwriter, Azoulay Hasfari penned the plays Match Void, Yom Kippur, and Mimuna, as well as the script for the film Sh’Chur (‘hex’) (1994), directed by her husband, playwright and director, Shmuel Hasfari. The largely autobiographical film was a huge success, taking home a total of six Ophir Awards including Best Film and Best Director. In 2013, she both directed and starred in the film, Orange People.
Highlights of her film credits include: Rage and Glory (Avi Nesher, 1984), Nadia (Amon Rubinstein, 1986), The Quarry (Ron Ninio, 1990), Electric Blanket (Assi Dayan, 1994), Lovesick on Nana Street (Savi Gabizon, 1995) – a part that one her a Best Actress Ophir Award, and Shiva (Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz, 2008).
