The man keeping Israeli drama on screen

As befits a former basketball player, Nati Dinnar is folded, rather than simply sitting, in the chair opposite me, his long limbs stretching well beyond its frame. We meet in Tel Aviv to talk not about sport – although basketball has shaped much of his life – but about IZZY, the streaming platform he founded to bring Israeli storytelling directly to global audiences. If viewers discovered Israeli drama through series such as Shtisel or Fauda, IZZY offers a deeper library of shows that never travelled beyond Israel’s borders. 

Nati, 57, calls himself “a child of television”. He started in Israeli commercial TV before moving into production. A documentary thriller he made about the 1972 Sabena hijacking drew acclaim but failed to land a major international platform. “The only way people [outside Israel] could see these films was at Jewish film festivals,” he says. When the festival ended, so did access.

In 2020, spotting new tech opportunities, he and a partner launched IZZY as a direct-to-consumer platform for Israeli content. Debuting in September 2020 with a modest catalogue, it benefited from Covid lockdowns. “We began to get subscribers, and every week provided new content.” Much of it had succeeded in Israel but had never been properly distributed to diaspora audiences.

The guiding principle was “good storytelling”. Israeli drama, he argues, thrives on originality and emotional depth rather than budget. Some series travelled; many more did not. IZZY became, in his words, “a bridge to connect the world with Israel”. He knew overseas Israelis were already accessing content through piracy. “But they watch in Hebrew. And piracy doesn’t offer subtitles.” From the outset, IZZY prioritised subtitling as part of his “mission to enhance the world’s relationship with Israel”.

Early growth was steady. Then October 7 happened. “Something internally changed in me,” Nati says. “I didn’t just want to build IZZY as a streaming platform. It became my duty, my obligation, my calling – because Israel needs to be independent in the way it communicates with the world.”

He distrusts reliance on global conglomerates. “We don’t know when executives and decision-makers will say, ‘This is not a good time to deal with Israel.’ Projects are already being kept on the shelf.” In 2024, when foreign airlines paused flights, he said to his wife: “Imagine if we didn’t have El Al, an airline that we control, so soldiers could get back to Israel and fight for our country.”

“This is IZZY,” he continues. “The Netflixes, the HBOs – they license content from Israel and want to air it but executives say there’s a price to pay for showing Israeli content. We have to build a platform big enough to not rely on them.”

Still, he believes drama cuts through politics. “There is an appetite for good stories beyond the Jewish world. If you shut down all Italian restaurants in New York, people will still want Italian food – they just won’t have a place to get it.” IZZY, he argues, keeps a table open.

The platform is not yet financing large-scale originals, but holds exclusive
rights to Kugel, the Shtisel prequel, and hints that 2027 will bring its first internationally-designed drama. Its slate now includes documentaries, podcasts and cooking and, soon, a news update programme.

Born in Boston while his father studied at Harvard, Nati grew up in Haifa with periods in the US. Basketball and TV defined his youth: four years as an IDF combat soldier, rising to lieutenant; two years playing professionally for Maccabi Haifa; then a move into commercial TV marketing in the ’90s, film production and, finally, his “last stop” – IZZY.

He repeatedly describes it as “a way of giving Israel soft power,” arguing that cultural exports shape perception more effectively than press briefings. “If audiences connect to Israeli characters – their humour, tensions, moral dilemmas – they may start to see the country in fuller dimension.”

For Nati, IZZY is about a long game built on the belief that “good storytelling” can travel further, and endure longer, than politics alone.

Sign up for IZZY https://izzy.streamisrael.tv