Osit was raised in the suburbs of New York City in
Tuckahoe (village), New York, where he graduated from
Tuckahoe High School in 2005. Osit studied Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the
University of Michigan where he was a
Wallenberg Fellow, and studied Refugee Law at the
American University in Cairo. His first documentary film, Building Babel, was filmed while Osit was in graduate school and followed real estate developer
Sharif El-Gamal during the 2010
Ground Zero Mosque controversy. The film was broadcast on PBS in 2013. He is the director, along with co-director
Malika Zouhali-Worrall, of the 2015 documentary
Thank You for Playing. Osit and Zouhali-Worrall also directed "Games You Can't Win," a short film inspired by the feature for
The New York Times Op-Docs. Both the feature and short were inspired by the art house video game
That Dragon, Cancer. In 2017, Thank You For Playing won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary. His third feature documentary,
Mayor, follows
Musa Hadid, the
mayor of Ramallah, the
de facto capital of
Palestine. The film premiered at the
True/False Film Festival in 2020, one of the last film festivals to proceed as scheduled in the first half of 2020 due to the
Coronavirus pandemic. It was theatrically released on December 2, 2020, to critical praise. The film was a
New York Times "Critic's Pick" and an
Indiewire "Critic's Pick", and won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Politics & Government Documentary, and a 2022
Peabody Award. His fourth feature documentary
Predators premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by
MTV Documentary Films and
Paramount+ for theatrical and worldwide release. The film was a
New York Times "Critic's Pick" and
Indiewire "Critic's Pick", and was frequently cited as one of the best documentaries of 2025. Osit has edited and composed for numerous documentary films and television shows, including Live From New York!, which was the opening night film of the 2015
Tribeca Film Festival. and
The Vow. He has cited his experience editing true crime television shows as part of the inspiration for making
Predators. He was named to the 2020
Doc NYC "40 Under 40" list. ==Influences==