Early career Nattiv worked in advertising early in his career. He served as head copywriter and then chief creative director for the advertising agency
Publicis Groupe for seven years.
2000-2010 He began his career as a film director and screenwriter in 2002 directing his graduate short film at Camera Obscura film school in Tel-Aviv,
The Flood, which won dozens of international film festivals around the world including the Crystal Bear Award at the
Berlin International Film Festival for best short film. In 2003, he began collaborating with director
Erez Tadmor. Together they directed the short film
Strangers, starring
Guy Loell and Sami Samir, about a Jew and an Arab who meet on a train and encounter a group of Neo Nazi skinheads. The film won the
2003 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Short Film, and the Wolgin Award at the
Jerusalem Film Festival in 2003.
Strangers also won more than 30 international film festivals and was shortlisted short for the Oscars. during the 2019 Montclair Film Festival Nattiv and Tadmor's second short film,
Offside, starring Liron Levo and Ido Musari, won the short film award at the 2006
Manhattan Film Festival. In 2008 Nattiv & Tadmor developed their short film
Strangers into a feature of the same name. The film is led by Liron Levo and
Lubna Azabal.
Strangers has participated in dozens of international film festivals, including the official competition at the
2008 Sundance Film Festivals and the
2008 Tribeca Film Festival.
Strangers has been sold and distributed in more than 28 countries around the world. In addition, actress
Lubna Azabel won the most Promising Actress Award at the 2008 Jerusalem Film Festival.
2010-2020 In 2010, Nattiv wrote and directed his second feature
Mabul aka
The Flood which was nominated for 4
Israeli Ophir Awards. The film stars
Ronit Alkabetz, Yoav Rotman,
Tzahi Grad and
Michael Moshonov, who also won the Ophir Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Mabul won a Special Mention at the
2011 Berlin film Festival (Generation category), the Audience Award and Special Artistic Achievement in the 2011
Thessaloniki Film Festival and was Nominated at the 2011
Asia Pacific Screen Awards for Best Children's Feature Film. His third feature film
Magic Men (In collaboration with
Erez Tadmor) is a journey of a father and son in northern
Greece, following a Greek magician who has disappeared. The film stars Kerem Khuri and
Zohar Strauss, the script was written in collaboration with Sharon Maimon. Erez and Nattiv co-directed the film, produced by Shemi Sheinfeld and Amitan Menelson with the investment of the Rabinowitz Foundation and
Channel 10. The film received four nominations at the
Ophir Israeli Awards, including Best Picture, Supporting Actor and original score and won Best Actor and the Israeli Critics circle. The film hit theaters in March 2014. Nattiv directed and wrote (in collaboration with
Erez Tadmor) a 12-minute short film called
Dear God starring
Lior Ashkenazi and
Raymond Amsalem, a poetic drama about the Western Wall guard, who follows a mysterious woman who comes to the Western Wall every day and at the end of each day, the guard reads the notes she writes and buries them in the Western Wall. during the 2019 Montclair Film Festival In 2018, Nattiv made his first American short
Skin. He co-wrote the script with Sharon Maimon, based on Maimon's original idea.
Skin was co-produced with Nattiv's wife and partner
Jaime Ray Newman and stars Danielle McDonald, as well as
Lonnie Chavis,
Jonathan Tucker,
Ashley Thomas and
Jackson Robert Scott.
Skin won the
Academy Award for
Best Live Action Short Film at the
91st Academy Awards. The short is a 20-minute movie, that focuses on a hate crime and its impact on a skinhead and two young children, one black and one white. The film participated in more than 400 film festivals and won 31 awards including
Saint Petersburg International Film Festival,
Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival,
HollyShorts Film Festival and more. In 2018, Nattiv's feature film
Skin was released which he made with his wife Newman. It stars
Vera Farmiga,
Jamie Bell,
Danielle Macdonald,
Bill Camp,
Louisa Krause,
Mike Colter and
Mary Stuart Masterson. Israeli producer
Oren Moverman along with
Trudie Styler, Sting's wife, signed on as producers of the movie.
Skin, the feature was released on June 27 through
DirecTV, before theaters on July 26 through
A24. The film centers on the character
Bryon Widner, a tattoo-covered skinhead, who decides to turn his back on the hate with which he was raised, going through a tremendously painful process to have every bit of offensive ink removed from his skin. This character was played by
Jamie Bell. The feature-length version premiered at the
Toronto Film Festival, where it won the
Fipresci Prize, an award given by the
International Federation of Film Critics. It was sold to more than 30 countries around the world, and participated at the
Deauville Film Festival.
The Hollywood Reporter called Bell's performance "moving" and "powerful". The feature is based on the life of
Bryon Widner a
Neo-Nazi skinhead who retired from the violent activity and later even became an FBI informant and was one of the prominent spokesmen against the hate groups. Widner was a vigorous and violent neo-Nazi activist, whose skin was full of hateful tattoos.
2020-current As in January 2020, Nattiv and
Jaime Ray Newman together with Keshet Studios have been known developing
A Stuntwoman, a limited series based on the book of the same name by Julie Ann Johnson and
Deadlines David Robb. The series is about Johnson, a pioneer for women stunt performers and one of Hollywood's first whistle-blowers. It tells the story based on the real life incidents about Johnson who in the 1970s became one of the first female stunt coordinators in Hollywood. Johnson battled Hollywood's "glass ceiling"; she took on the stunt community's "cocaine cowboys" and she fought against one of the most formidable film and television personalities of her time,
Aaron Spelling. In 2021, Nattiv and Newman created
Life Unexpected, a short documentary shot over 10 years in intimate, raw home footage that tells the story of the unforgiving roller coaster of bringing life into this world. The short is a co-production between New Native Pictures, Katsina Communication, and Channel HOT. It premiered at the Lighthouse International film festival in June 2021. Toronto-based Ouat Media has the world distribution rights for the documentary. In 2023, Nattiv teamed up with director
Zar Amir Ebrahimi, from a screenplay by Nattiv and Elham Erfani and made the film
TATAMI and its Asian premiere at the 36th
Tokyo International Film Festival on October 25, 2023. It was also screened in the 19th
Zurich Film Festival on October 2, 2023. In February 2024,
XYZ Films acquired US distribution rights to the film. It stars
Arienne Mandi, Ebrahimi,
Jaime Ray Newman, Ash Goldeh and Sina Parvaneh. It had its world premiere at the
80th Venice International Film Festival on September 2, 2023, receiving positive reviews from the critics and audience. The film follows Iranian female judoka Leila (
Arienne Mandi) and her coach Maryam (
Zar Amir Ebrahimi), who travel to the
Judo World Championship, intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal. This includes a possible
encounter with an Israeli athlete, something that the Mullah regime prohibits. Midway through the competition, Leila and her coach receive repeated threats from the Islamic Republic ordering Leila to fake an injury and drop out of the tournament. With her own and her family’s freedom at stake, Leila faces a difficult choice: feign injury and comply with the Iranian regime as Maryam implores her to do, or defy them both and fight on, for the gold. With Nattiv and Ebrahimi as co-directors, the project marks the first feature film to be co-directed by an Iranian and an Israeli filmmaker. It is produced by Adi Ezroni and Mandy Tagger Brockey, alongside New Native Pictures. WestEnd Films acquired international rights in February 2023. Other production companies involved in the project include White Lodge Productions, Maven Pictures, Tale Runners and Sarke Studios. Nattiv is also attached to direct
Golda starring
Helen Mirren.
Michael Kuhn and Nicholas Martin are the producer of the film. Martin also wrote the screenplay. The plot of
Golda focuses on the decisions made by Meir during the
Yom Kippur War, when the combined forces of
Egypt,
Syria and
Jordan launched a surprise attack on
Israel in 1973. Nattiv's next film,
Harmonia, is a feature film based on the life of his grandmother, a
Holocaust survivor, who ended up as part of a women's cult in Virginia. He co-wrote with Noa Berman-Herzberg. Cast includes
Carrie Coon,
Lily James,
Bella Ramsey, and Odessa Young as
Embankment Films,
Range Media Partners and CAA Media Finance launch pre-sales ahead of
Cannes. Production began and wrapped in the summer of 2025 in
British Columbia, Canada. == Critical reception ==