Eyal Sivan

Eyal Sivan was born in 1964 in Haifa

Eyal Sivan was born in Haifa on September 9, 1964, and grew up in Jerusalem. His mother is the archaeologist and curator Rene Sivan and his father is the architect Arie Sivan. From a young age he worked in photography and took part in social and political activity.

He worked as a commercial photographer in Tel Aviv, then settled in Paris in 1985 and turned to documentary film. His first film, about the Aqabat Jaber refugee camp, was shot in 1986. Later films include Izkor, Slaves of Memory (1991), The Specialist (1999) on the Eichmann trial, Route 181 with Michel Khleifi, Jaffa (2009) and Common State (2012).

He founded the film company Momento ! and the distribution agency Scalpel, and created the journal South Cinema Notebooks, published with Sapir Academic College. He wrote two nonfiction books and has taught at schools in the Netherlands, Britain, Italy and Israel.

His political statements drew sharp criticism. After philosopher Alain Finkielkraut criticized him in 2003, Sivan sued for libel, but the suit was dismissed and an appeals court rejected his appeal in May 2007. In September 2025 he signed a pledge by Film Workers for Palestine not to work with certain Israeli film institutions.