Guy Nattiv

Guy Nattiv (גיא נתיב; born May 24, 1973) is an Israeli film director, screenwriter and producer who lives and works in the United States.

His film Skin won an Oscar for best short film at the 91st Academy Awards.

As of May 2021, Nattiv and Moshe Mizrahi are the only Israeli directors who have won an Academy award.

Skin won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film at the 91st Academy Awards.

The short is a 20-minute movie, that focuses on a hate crime and its impact on a skinhead and two young children, one black and one white.

The film participated in more than 400 film festivals and won 31 awards including Saint Petersburg International Film Festival, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, HollyShorts Film Festival and more.

He began his career as a film director and screenwriter in 2002 directing his graduate short film at Camera Obscura film school in Tel-Aviv, The Flood, which won dozens of international film festivals around the world including the Crystal Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival for best short film.

In 2003, he began collaborating with director Erez Tadmor.

Together they directed the short film Strangers, starring Guy Loell and Sami Samir, about a Jew and an Arab who meet on a train and encounter a group of Neo Nazi skinheads.

The film won the 2003 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Short Film, and the Wolgin Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2003.

Strangers also won more than 30 international film festivals and was shortlisted short for the Oscars.

Nattiv & Tadmor's second short film, Offside, starring Liron Levo and Ido Musari, won the short film award at the 2006 Manhattan Film Festival.

In 2008 Nattiv & Tadmor developed their short film Strangers into a feature of the same name.

The film is led by Liron Levo and Lubna Azabal.

Strangers has participated in dozens of international film festivals, including the official competition at the 2008 Sundance Film Festivals and the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.

Strangers has been sold and distributed in more than 28 countries around the world.

In addition, actress Lubna Azabel won the most Promising Actress Award at the 2008 Jerusalem Film Festival.

In 2010, Nattiv wrote and directed his second feature Mabul aka The Flood which was nominated for 4 Israeli Ophir Awards.

The film stars Ronit Alkabetz, Yoav Rotman, Tzachi Grad and Michael Moshonov, who also won the Ophir Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Mabul won a Special Mention at the 2011 Berlin film Festival (Generation category), the Audience Award and Special Artistic Achievement in the 2011 Thessaloniki Film Festival and was Nominated at the 2011 Asia Pacific Screen Awards for Best Children's Feature Film.

His third feature film Magic Men (In collaboration with Erez Tadmor) is a journey of a father and son in northern Greece, following a Greek magician who has disappeared.

The film stars Kerem Khuri and Zohar Strauss, the script was written in collaboration with Sharon Maimon.

Erez and Guy co-directed the film, produced by Shemi Sheinfeld and Amitan Menelson with the investment of the Rabinowitz Foundation and Channel 10.

The film received four nominations at the Ophir Israeli Awards, including Best Picture, Supporting Actor and original score and won Best Actor and the Israeli Critics circle.

Nattiv graduated in 2012 from Camera Obscura film school in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Nattiv worked in advertising early in his career.

He served as head copywriter and then chief creative director for the advertising agency Publicis Groupe for 7 years.

The film hit theaters in March 2014.

In addition, Nattiv directed and wrote (in collaboration with Erez Tadmor) a 12-minute short film called Dear God starring Lior Ashkenazi and Raymond Amsalem, a poetic drama about the Western Wall guard, who follows a mysterious woman who comes to the Western Wall every day and at the end of each day, the guard reads the notes she writes and buries them in the Western Wall.

He decides to fulfill her secret wishes.

The film was funded by the Film and Television "Makor Fund" and was nominated for an Ophir Israeli Award in the Best Short Film category.

Dear God is the last collaboration of Nattiv and Tadmor.

Tadmor and Nattiv pointed out that Dear God is actually part of a trilogy where it joins Offside and Strangers as the last of the trilogy of short films without dialogue that they directed together.

It shows how "People connect in absurd and extreme situations without words, just humanity".

In 2018, Nattiv made his first American short Skin.

He co-wrote the script with Sharon Maimon, based on Maimon's original idea.

Skin was co-produced with Nattiv's wife and partner Jaime Ray Newman and stars Danielle McDonald, as well as Lonnie Chavis, Jonathan Tucker, Ashley Thomas and Jackson Robert Scott.

In 2018, Nattiv's feature film Skin was released which he made with his wife Newman.

In 2019, he received IFF Achievement in Film Award at the 33rd Israel Film Festival.

He has been an official member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 2019.