Daniel Ziv
Director
Daniel Ziv is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, non-fiction writer, urban magazine founder, editor and storytelling consultant.
Originally from Vancouver, Daniel spent much of his adulthood in Southeast Asia, where he worked as a diplomat, journalist, humanitarian aid worker, filmmaker, and author of two non-fiction books on Asian cities.
His feature-length documentary, JALANAN, screened at 65 film festivals in 31 countries, winning 12 international awards. Daniel founded and edited the popular, irreverent monthly Djakarta! – The City Life Magazine, and is author of the urban pop culture book Jakarta Inside Out, an Asian bestseller, and its follow-up volume, Bangkok Inside Out.
In between creative projects, Daniel spent a number of years working for international humanitarian aid and development agencies, including UNICEF, USAID and UN-OCHA. He also worked as a freelance newspaper and radio reporter across Southeast Asia, and as a diplomat in India.
During his time in Indonesia, Daniel was a regular speaker and moderator at the annual Ubud Writers & Readers Festival and a founding member of Hubud – Bali’s first co-working space. He also served as co-curator and on-stage host of TEDxUbud. In 2012, he was named by global PR firm Burson-Marsteller as one of Indonesia’s 10 most influential voices on Twitter, the only non-Indonesian to make the list.
Daniel holds an MA in Southeast Asian Studies from the University of London, and is fluent in English, Hebrew and Indonesian.
In 2016 he was selected as one of 16 Yale World Fellows by Yale University, where he spent a semester researching, teaching and giving talks on campus.