Gideon Raff

Gideon Raff was born in 1972 in Jerusalem

Raff was born in Jerusalem in 1972 to a Jewish family. His father, Eitan Raff, served as Accountant General in the Ministry of Finance and chaired Bank Leumi. From age 2 to 6 he lived in Washington, D.C., where his father was an economic adviser at the Israeli Embassy.

He served 3 years as a paratrooper in the IDF and then earned a degree in film at Tel Aviv University. He worked in IT and wrote a weekly column in Ma'ariv about life at a startup, later collected in a 2001 book. In 2003 he completed a graduate degree in directing at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles.

His short film The Babysitter premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and he then worked as an assistant to director Doug Liman on Mr. & Mrs. Smith. He directed the features The Killing Floor and Train. He created, wrote and directed Prisoners of War, which first aired in Israel in 2010.

Raff co-developed Homeland with Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, served as executive producer and co-wrote its pilot, which aired on Showtime in 2011. He later created Tyrant for FX and Dig with Tim Kring. He wrote and directed The Spy about Eli Cohen and directed the Netflix film The Red Sea Diving Resort, released in 2019.

In 2023 he began writing a drama for the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, but production stopped after October 7 and the outbreak of war. He is openly gay and lives with his partner in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. He became vegan in 2007.