Gideon Raff
Israeli film director
Gideon "Gidi" Raff (Hebrew: גדעון "גידי" רף; born 10 September 1972) is an Israeli film and television director, screenwriter, and writer. He is best known for his creation of the Channel 2 thriller drama series Prisoners of War, from which he later co-developed the American version of the series, Homeland.
Early life
Raff was born in Jerusalem, to a Jewish family. His father is Eitan Raff, who served as Accountant General in the Israeli Ministry of Finance, was Chairman of the Board of Bank Leumi and, as of August 2017, was under criminal investigation for having aided US customers in tax evasion.
From the ages of two to six he lived in Washington, D.C., where his father was Economic Adviser to the Israeli Embassy.
After serving three years as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces, he completed a degree in film at Tel Aviv University.
Raff then worked in IT. For a year or so, during the dot-com bubble, he was responsible for content at a startup company, and wrote a weekly column in Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv about his experiences. The columns were collected into a book titled Diary of a Start-Upper on the Way to the Hit (Exit) (Keter, 2001).
Film and television career
Raff moved to Los Angeles and, in 2003, completed a graduate degree in directing at the American Film Institute. His graduation short film The Babysitter premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, following which director Doug Liman hired him as director's assistant on the 2005 film Mr.
The public source identifies “Gideon Raff” as israeli film director. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gideon, Raff and Israeli.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5559656. VIAF identifies the subject as 120200193. The Library of Congress control number is no2011115377. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1972, 2017, 2001 and 2003.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gideon Raff” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.