Vanessa Lapa

Vanessa Lapa was born in 2000 in Antwerp

Lapa was born on May 29, 1975, in Antwerp, Belgium. She grew up in a Zionist home linked to Betar. She immigrated to Israel alone at 19.

She studied Middle Eastern and Arabic studies at Tel Aviv University. She then studied film at the Camera Obscura school in Tel Aviv.

She worked as a researcher on current affairs shows at Channel 1. In 2002 she joined the new Channel 10, as a researcher and later as a foreign news reporter. She also produced and directed a 52-minute film on the West Bank barrier for Thomas Friedman of The New York Times.

In 2006 she founded the production company RealWorks. Her 2008 film on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was shelved by Keshet after the Talansky affair surfaced, and it aired months later. She then spent 7 years on Himmler's diaries to make The Decent One, which premiered in Berlin in 2014.

Her next film, Speer Goes to Hollywood, uses taped talks from 1971 and 1972 between Albert Speer and screenwriter Andrew Birkin. It premiered in Berlin in 2020 and won the Ophir Award for long documentary for 2021.