Tamir Naim came to documentary filmmaking through video editing, but found himself in a less expected place: the intersection of documentary filmmaking and artificial intelligence. "This is perhaps the strangest place to be in documentary filmmaking," he says, "between the purity of filmmaking and a technology that is changing the rules of the game."

In early 2023 he founded Israel's first dedicated AI department for broadcast. Since then he has advised filmmakers, producers, and production companies who are no longer asking whether to use AI, but how to do it right. Naim has developed workflows that carry projects from idea to broadcast, mentors at the Makor Foundation and Kan 11 documentary and AI incubators, and is developing dedicated AI tools for the industry. His background across content, technology, and post-production lets him see the bigger picture. "The tool should always serve the story," he emphasizes, even with the newest technology.

Projects he has worked on include "Murder at the Water Tower," "Carmi Gillon: On My Watch," and "The Naked Archaeologist" (Vision TV, Canada). Alongside his professional work he is a pop-culture geek, an '80s and '90s geek, and above all a film geek who has been glued to the screen since childhood. Today he runs an independent business specializing in strategy and the implementation of AI across the film and television production pipeline, in Israel and around the world, exploring how technology can expand creation rather than replace it.

Personal Message

"We live in an era of the democratization of content, and that is already doing quite a bit of damage. The documentary world has always believed the tool is in service of the story, not the other way around - artificial intelligence is no exception, but rather its natural next step: a toolbox that, in the right hands, lets you do more with fewer resources, without compromising the message or the human story."