Raphael Assaf

Raphael Assaf, Senior Lecturer (MA, BA, FHEA) is a director and producer. He is known for the multi-award-winning features films "The Zero Sum" (2009), "I Am My Father" (2001), and "Devil Winds" (2003). After being an assistant to producer Michael Derbas on various international projects, he and his wife went "off grid" for 7 years in the Canadian Rockies to bring up their two children. In the fall of 2015, he could be heard on CBC radio alongside a local Rabbi defending an offer to house Syrian refugees. Raphael is of Lebanese, Irish Catholic and Lithuanian Jewish descent. In 2016, after returning to his hometown of Ottawa, Canada, Raphael obtained a Private Investigators License and documented the life of an Uber driver before approaching City Hall with a proposal to help solve the taxi drivers' crisis. The family now divide their time between Canada and the UK, where Raphael is focused on a documentary project investigating the creative artists' journey and their purpose amidst an impending AI revolution. Raphael lectures on ideation, storytelling, acting and live-action filmmaking and spent 5 years with the world-ranked University of Hertfordshire's Animation Department.