Boaz Dvir

Award-winning filmmaker and Penn State assistant professor Boaz Dvir tells the stories of ordinary people who, under extraordinary circumstances, transform into trailblazers and game changers. For instance, his PBS film, A Wing and a Prayer, recounts a World War II flight engineer's transformation into the leader of a secret operation to save newborn Israel. Dvir, who is writing a book for Rowman & Littlefield about this 1948 operation, is in post-production on Cojot, a feature documentary that tells the story of a French banker who set out to kill former Nazi officer Klaus Barbie and ended up playing a pivotal role in Israel's 1976 Operation Entebbe; and Discovering Gloria, about an inner-city schoolteacher who becomes a highly effective innovator and national model. Dvir's critically acclaimed films also include Jessie's Dad, which captures an uneducated truck driver's transformation into a national child-protection activist. Dvir teamed up with Retro Report to produce a short documentary, "How Special Ops Became Central to the War On Terror," for The New York Times. Lifetime and Investigation Discovery have incorporated footage from Dvir's documentaries into their programs. His films have received coverage by such media as the Huffington Post, Haaretz, MSNBC, the New York Post, The Miami Herald, Stars and Stripes, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Florida magazine. Dvir's films have won several prestigious awards. For instance, A Wing and a Prayer won Best Documentary in the 2016 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. Dvir has also taught journalism and documentary filmmaking at the University of Florida. He has written for many publications, including New York's Newsday, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, The Miami Herald, the Tampa Bay Times, the Las Vegas Sun, the Jerusalem Post, The Satirist, Scripps Howard's Treasure Coast Newspapers, the Times of Israel and Explore magazine. Dvir served as editor of the Jacksonville Business Journal and managing editor of the South Florida Business Journal, which are part of the Newhouse-owned American City Business Journals. For several years, he appeared on "Week in Review" and wrote commentaries for WJCT, Jacksonville's NPR/PBS station. Dvir created a documentary short about PALS, which helped the nonprofit that aids troubled teens receive an official nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants. Dvir received a Lilly Endowment grant from the Religion News Service to research spiritual aspects of the Holocaust. He served as an officer and a military journalist in the Israel Defense Forces, where he gathered vital information during 1991 Gulf War, providing material to foreign correspondents, James Baker's office and then Israeli spokesman and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.