Samuel Maoz Samuel Maoz Samuel Maoz (Hebrew: שמואל מעוז; born c. 1962) is an Israeli film director. His 2009 film, "Lebanon" won the Golden Lion at the 66th Venice International Film Festival. He also won the award for Best Screenplay for Lebanon at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards in 2010. Shmuel (Shmuel) Maoz was born in Tel Aviv. At the age of 20, he was a gunner in one of the first Israeli tanks to enter Lebanon in the 1982 Lebanon War. After the war, he trained as a cameraman at the Beit Zvi theater school, and did art direction in film
The World (film) France's Lumen Films. It received additional financial support from the Shanghai Film Studio and several Japanese corporations including Bandai Visual and Tokyo FM, among others. The film premiered in competition at the 2004 Venice Film Festival on September 4, 2004, but failed to win the coveted Golden Lion, the festival's top award, which ultimately went to Mike Leigh's drama "Vera Drake", but which Jia would win two years later with "Still Life". "The World" also premiered in 2004 at the New York Film Festival and would go on to receive a limited release in New York City the following year