Life and Works

Bernstein was born July 8, 1970, in Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

.

He directed the 2007 film The Debt

The Debt (2007 film)

HaHov, HaChov, or in English, The Debt, is a 2007 Israeli drama-thriller film directed by Assaf Bernstein and starring Gila Almagor, Yuriy Chepurnov, and Oleg Drach, about three retired Mossad agents confronted by a challenge from their past...

(Hebrew: HaChov or HaHov), starring Gila Almagor

Gila Almagor

Gila Almagor is an Israeli actress, film star, and author.-Biography:Gila Almagor was born four months after the death of her father, Max Alexandrowitz, a Jewish immigrant from Germany who was killed by an Arab sniper while working as a policeman in Haifa...

, about three former Israeli Mossad

Mossad

The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....

 agents who must confront a secret from their past. He also wrote and co-produced the film, and later helped write the 2010 U.S. English-language remake, also titled The Debt, starring Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren

Dame Helen Mirren, DBE is an English actor. She has won an Academy Award for Best Actress, four SAG Awards, four BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, four Emmy Awards, and two Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Awards.-Early life and family:...

in the Gila Almagor role.

Before that, he had directed the 2001 Israeli TV movie "Run," about a young Ethiopian boy who had immigrated to Israel whose body is found in a trailer park trash pit. While few seem to care about the death, the two "mis-matched" police officers assigned to investigate learn more and more about the outcasts of Israel, and in the process, much about themselves as well.

Bernstein began his film career with two documentary short subjects, "It Belongs to the Bank" (1999), a "social documentary" that follows a woman bailiff's journey through Arab villages and urban slums as she seizes property from Israel's poor; and "Holy for Me" (1995), a "spoof" on tours, guides, and visits to the holy sites of Jerusalem, which won the 1995 Best Short Film award at the Jerusalem Film Festival.