Uri Barbash is a film and television director, and one of Israel’s most prolific creators since the early 1980s. His military service was spent in the Shaked border patrol unit. His reserve duty service saw him end up in combat, both in the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War. His military experiences echo in his body of work.
In 1982, Barbash directed Stigma, his debut, feature-length film. Then, 1984 saw the beginning of his long-term, fertile collaboration with his brother, screenwriter Benny Barbash, with whom he co-created Beyond the Walls – a prison drama that follows the tensions and alliances between Israeli and Palestinian inmates behind prison walls. The film was nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film Category and took home six Israeli Film Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. Later, Barbash also won the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week Award. Many of the films Barbash later created after Beyond the Walls continued to explore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In 1989, the Barbash Brothers’ third collaboration yielded One of Us; a film that won them four Israeli Academy Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. Highlights of Barbash’s other films include Once we were Dreamers (1987), Where Eagles Fly (1990), Beyond the Walls II (1992), and Licking the Raspberry (1992). His 2014 film, Kapo in Jerusalem, won the Shoumann Honorable Award at Jerusalem’s Jewish Film Festival. Barbash’s directing credits also extend to a string of hit TV series, including Kastner Trial (1994), Tironoot (‘basic training’) (1997), My First Sony (2002), and Miluim (‘army reserve duty’) (2005).
