Benny Brunner

Benny Brunner was born in 1954 in Bârlad

Benny Brunner was born in 1954 in Bârlad, Romania, and moved to Israel as a child. His parents were socialists who supported David Ben-Gurion. His mother, Clara, wanted him to study law.

He studied film in the Department of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. He served in the IDF and fought in the Yom Kippur War. During that war he began to question the national story he had learned in school.

In 1986 he left Israel to make political films, worked briefly in London, and then settled in Amsterdam. His 1990 film about Yeshayahu Leibowitz received a special commendation at the Prix Europa in 1991. He later made The Seventh Million, based on Tom Segev's book about Holocaust survivors in Israel.

His 1996 film Al-Nakba dealt with the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. The Wall and The Concrete Curtain documented the West Bank barrier. The Great Book Robbery, from 2011, examined the taking of Palestinian books in 1948.