Yuval Ovadia

Yuval Ovadia

After serving 3 years in the Israeli army he flew to New York, planning to study filmmaking and acting in the best schools he could find.
In NY he studied at Lee Strasburg Institute, where he studied acting, singing and dancing. Later on he continued his studies at HB Studio, where he spent a long time under the late, famous Herbert Berghof and Bill Hickey. Then he studied all aspects of filmmaking at NYU Film School.
By the years 1996-1998 Yuval worked on a feature film called “Orphan Of War” – a 90 min, 35 mm Action/Drama, co-starring the legendary singer from Woodstock “Richie Havens”. In addition to co-producing this film, Yuval had starred in it, co-wrote the screenplay, edited, and came up with a music album called “Peaceful Circle” – based on songs from the film, which he produced together with Mr. Richie Havens.
In 1998 Yuval got involved with the NY producer Bruce Weiss and the well known director Charles Lane (“Sidewalk Stories”, “True Identity”) in order to produce a feature called “Kaleidoscope”, written by Yuval and Thomas Mitz, a film which was suppose to be co-starring Wesley Snipes. During that time Yuval decided to go back to his roots and in 1999 he moved back from New York to Israel, were he got married and now has four beautiful kids.
Back in Israel, between 2000 and 2008, Yuval played different creative roles, such as writing, directing, editing and producing, in about 7 different 50-60min. long documentaries (a full list and/or a show reel is available upon request) most of them are about Judaism and spirituality and some of them were broadcast on Israeli TV channels.
In 2009 Yuval co-directed, edited and starred in a 70min. historical docudrama, called “The Jerusalem Code”.
During 2008-2010, Yuval produced, wrote & directed a 63 minutes docudrama, called “Divine Journey To Hollywood”, based on his personal life story, this film played a few times on the Israeli TV and was distributed in more then 2 million copies in Jewish communities worldwide.
During 2010-2011, he worked as a director and writer (together with Or Yashar and Prosper Malka) on a 90 minutes feature film (for the first time in his life as a director of a feature film), called “Hamesima X” (in Hebrew – Mission X), he is played the roles of editor, producer and actor. Hamesima X was officially selected to 13 international film festivals, and won a several film awards.
In addition to filmmaking, Yuval also gives lectures both in Hebrew and English on these subjects: Filmmaking, Judaism in modern time, Spirituality VS Materialism, The impact of modern media and more. He has been invited by schools, universities and different communities around the world.