Ofra Bikel


Ofra Bikel was an Israeli-American documentary filmmaker and television producer. For more than two decades she was a mainstay of the acclaimed PBS series [Frontline (American TV program)|Frontline] producing over 25 award-winning documentaries, ranging from foreign affairs to critiques of the U.S. criminal justice system.

Life and career

Bikel was born in Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine on September 12, 1929, to the Yechieli-Ichilov family. Her father was an electrical engineer and her mother was a special education teacher.
At age 19 she moved to Paris to study political science, graduating from the University of Paris and the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris. She then moved to New York City. She was briefly married to actor and folk singer Theodore Bikel. She was a researcher for Time, Newsweek, and ABC Television. She moved to public television, producing films for the WGBH series The World and later for the long-running series Frontline.
In the mid-1970s, Bikel moved to her native Israel and produced more than 15 films. She returned to the U.S. in 1977. In the 1990s, she began reporting on miscarriage of justice cases, starting with her "Innocence Lost" trilogy of films about a case of alleged sexual abuse in Edenton, North Carolina. Her reporting is credited with freeing 13 wrongfully convicted people from prison, including one who had been on death row. Bikel eventually returned to Israel and spent the last decade of her life there.
Her documentary films intersperse long interviews with sharp, silent, moments.
Bikel died at her home in Tel Aviv on August 11, 2024, at the age of 94.

Awards