Director of
MARE SAPIENS
Jeff Silva is an American artist, filmmaker, teacher, and film programmer from Boston. He studied Cinema and Photography at Ithaca College and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts; he later received his Ph.D. from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). His work combines artistic practice with social science research and has been shown internationally at festivals and museums, including MoMA's Documentary Fortnight, the Viennale, Visions du Réel, BAFICI, and Valdivia. He now lives in Marseille, where he heads the documentary film branch of La Fabrique des écritures ethnographiques. His first feature film MARE SAPIENS (2026), co-directed with Aurélie Darbouret, was shot entirely underwater using natural light and ambient sound, and presents the Bay of Marseille as a space where living forms, infrastructure, and machines coexist.
Films (selection): BALKAN RHAPSODIES: 78 MEASURES OF WAR (2008), IVAN & IVANA (2011), LINEFORK (2016), LÀ OÙ LA TERRE (2018), L'ORDRE DES CHOSES (2022), MARE SAPIENS (2026)