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Dror Soref is an award-winning filmmaker who started his career directing music videos for a young "Weird Al" Yankovic in 1983, shortly after attending USC Film School. Soref later directed Platinum Blonde, an inspirational short film that landed him a housekeeping deal at Paramount Studios. With the help of Paramount, The Seventh Coin became Soref’s debut as a feature film writer/director. Starring Peter O’Toole, The Seventh Coin won two festival awards in 1993, including Best Picture. Throughout the following decade Soref directed or executive produced over a hundred commercials and music videos. In 2003, Soref returned to feature films, co-producing Basic for Columbia Pictures, starring John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. In 2009 Soref wrote, directed and produced the critically acclaimed thriller Not Forgotten starring Simon Baker and Paz Vega.

Early life and education

Dror Soref was born and raised in Israel and is of Spanish ancestry. He attended the University of Haifa, earning degrees in economics, sociology and anthropology. During his first year at the university, Soref founded a repertory theater, bringing to the stage original material with politically satirical content. His studies were interrupted when as a lieutenant in the elite Golani Brigade of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), Soref was called for service during several military conflicts, including the Yom Kippur War. The unit under Soref’s command was cited for excellence by the IDF’s Chief-of-Staff.

While a student, Soref wrote frequently on Israeli-Palestinian relations, and during his second year at the university, with fellow IDF retired officers and others, he founded a new national political party which played a key role in the future coalition government of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the early nineties. At the age of 23, while a third year student, Soref was nominated by his party to run for parliament. One of Soref’s articles, Envisioning the Israeli-Palestinian Peace, incorporates the same principles as the first peace treaty between the parties, known as the Oslo Accords (1993), but written more than a decade earlier. A number of books have been written about Soref during these years. University, State and Society in Israel by Professor Shlomo Swirski, outlines the political consciousness and insight of a few young leaders, particularly Soref. In Y. Rubin’s semi-autobiographical book, The Hypochondriac, the author portrays Soref as the embodiment of the mythical persona of the ‘ideal’ Israeli youth.

Soref’s introduction to filmmaking came during his last year at the University of Haifa, when he was invited to attend a film workshop conducted by Benjamin Koretsky, Roman Polanski’s cinematography teacher back in the Lodz Film School in Poland. To pursue film studies, Soref emigrated to the United States, first attending San Francisco Art Institute, and then the Cinema School of the University of Southern California (USC).

Career

Poster from Soref's first feature as Director, Producer, and Co-Writer

In the mid-eighties, following USC, Soref was hired to direct “I Love Rocky Road,” a music video for an unknown rock parodist at the time, Weird Al Yankovic. The video helped establish Weird Al as an upcoming star. Success in music video field lead Soref to directing Platinum Blonde, an inspirational short film starring Karen Black and a fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Berkley. As the creative force behind Platinum Blonde, Soref was profiled in the Los Angeles Times, Premiere Magazine, and The Hollywood Reporter. After viewing the short, the president of Paramount Pictures Studio Group offered Soref a housekeeping deal on the famed studio lot.

With the help of Paramount, The Seventh Coin became Soref’s debut as a feature film writer/director. Starring Peter O’Toole, the film won two festival awards including Best Picture, and inspired the Los Angeles Today critic to proclaim, “…director Dror Soref has made an explosive debut with his powerful movie.” While at Paramount, Soref founded Orbit Productions, serving as one of its commercial directors. Soref executive-produced or directed over one hundred TV commercials or music videos, leading Orbit to become one of the fastest growing commercial production companies at that time. Some of Orbit’s spots have been featured on the Super Bowl and Academy Awards telecasts. The directorial roster at Orbit included, in addition to Soref, such acclaimed directors as Wim Wenders, Carroll Ballard, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Bruce Beresford. Soref later parlayed a successful career in commercials into feature films, signing a multiple-picture deal with Mike Medavoy’s Phoenix Pictures with one of them for Soref to direct. The first motion picture under this deal was Basic starring John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson, released by Columbia Pictures.

In early 2009, Soref completed Not Forgotten, a film he directed, co-wrote and produced, starring Simon Baker, Paz Vega and Claire Forlani. The film was selected for a Special Screening at the Slamdance Film Festival, where all its screenings were sold out before being picked up for distribution by Anchor Bay Films. Both The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety gave the film rave reviews.

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