Defining moments: Amos Gitai

A BBC series is asking influential figures around the world about the defining moments in their life.

Gitai's films focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Amos Gitai is an Israeli film director. His film Kedma - set a week before the state of Israel's creation in 1948 - was one of the most high-profile movies at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

October, 1973. Quite a sunny day, like today in Tel Aviv, at about two o'clock in the afternoon, there are sirens, and it's the beginning of the Yom Kippur war.

I am a student of architecture and like most people of my generation I am drawn into this war.

After a few days I find myself in a rescue team in a helicopter, bringing people who had been burning and killed in the battlefields and tanks.

And after several days of doing this work, carrying stretchers of dead people, the fifth day we fly over the Golan to look for another bulk of wounded people and the helicopter that I was sitting in is shot by a Syrian missile.

The co-pilot is killed. He is decapitated.

People are wounded very badly, and somehow I managed to come out with two hands and two feet.

That war made Israel end a period of what some people like to call a kind of age of innocence Amos Gitai

That day of October 1973 made me what I am today. I stopped being an architect.

I felt that architecture is maybe interesting for another country, another life, but it's a bit too formal an exercise for me.

And I started to make films, very gradually over 20 years, each time trying to touch a nerve of this country.

I think that that war, which shook I think an entire generation, made Israel end a period of what some people like to call a kind of age of innocence.

The Israelis after that war would not trust any more their politicians, they would be suspicious of them.

And I think this age is lasting until today.

I think it also pushed me not to be seduced only by the showbiz aspect of making films.

It's very nice to be in the Cannes Festival - black limousines, and so on.

But you have to say certain things that need to be said, and they need to be put in cinematic form, and why not you?

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Defining Moments will run until 23 July on BBC World Service's World Today programme. You can also read people's recollections on BBC News Online.