Eyal Sivan

Eyal Sivan (Hebrew: אייל סיון) is an Israeli documentary filmmaker, theoretician and scholar based in Paris, France. After working as a professional commercial photographer in Tel Aviv, he left Israel in 1985 and settled in Paris. He now splits his time between Europe and Israel. Sivan has produced and directed more than a dozen political documentaries. Common State (2012), Jaffa (2009) and Route 181 (2003) won awards at various festivals. Sivan's films are regularly exhibited in art exhibitions including Documenta, Manifesta and ICP New York. His work touches on such themes as the representation of political crime; the political use of memory; the ethics of documentary filmmaking; and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is the founder and artistic director of the Paris-based documentary film company Momento ! and of the film distribution agency Scalpel. He created South Cinema Notebooks, a journal of cinema criticism published by the Sapir Academic College in Ashkelon. In response to a question by Aljazeera as to why so many "progressive and anti-Zionist academics, activists, and artists" are fleeing Israel, Sivan responded: "The veil of democracy is being ripped from Israeli faces." In September 2025, Sivan signed an open pledge with Film Workers for Palestine pledging not to work with Israeli film institutions "that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people." Professor, Amsterdam University of the Arts, Nederlands Associate Professor, Media Production, University of East London, School of Arts and Digital Industries, United Kingdom Honorary Fellow, European Centre for Palestinian Studies, University of Exeter, United Kingdom Visiting professor, Netherlands Film Academy, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Visiting professor, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan, Italy Visiting professor, Sapir Academic College, School of Sound and Visual Arts, Ashkelon, Israel