Shimon Dotan is a Romanian-born Israeli film director and graduate of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Film and Television Studies’ inaugural class. His first films included Repeat Dive (1982), a feature-length film about life in a naval commando unit, documentary shorts Souvenirs from Tel Aviv (1983) and Souvenirs from Hebron (1983), and The Smile of the Lamb (1986), a film adaptation of the book by David Grossman.
In the late 1980s, Dotan immigrated to the US where he continued to make films (including The Finest Hour, produced by Menahem Golan, and starring Rob Lowe.) He later relocated to Montreal, Canada where he continued to make action films and dramas. Since 1995, Dotan has lived in New York City with his family where he teaches film studies at NYU. In 2007, he made Hot House, a documentary about Palestinians jailed in Israeli prisons for security reasons. In 2010, he directed Watching TV with The Red Chinese and in 2016, his film The Settlers, which examines Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank opened in cinemas.
