BIOGRAPHY

Alexander Jonathan Vidgop is a director, author and screenwriter. Alexander is the founder of the Am haZikaron Institute for Science, Culture and Heritage of the Jewish People. He is the recipient of the Zeiti Yerushalaim Prize and the medal “For contribution to the development of the national spiritual heritage of the Jewish People”.
Alexander was born in Leningrad in 1955. In 1974 he was expelled from what is now called the Saint-Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts “for behaviour unworthy of the title of Soviet student”. Having worked as a locksmith, loader and White Sea sailor, he was drafted into the army and sent to serve in the Arctic Circle. Graduating from the Russian State Academy of Performing Arts in 1982, he was involved in 23 productions across the USSR, 12 of which were shut down. In 1989 he emigrated to Israel, where he has worked as a director, editor and researcher. Jonathan was awarded a special grant from the Israeli president for writing. Leading Russian publisher NLO published Vidgop’s latest book Testimony. Jonathan’s stories were published by the Los Angeles Review and the Pembroke Magazine, Nomads won 2022 Meridian’s Editors’ Prize in Prose. In 2025 Jonathan won a poetry competition conducted by Chinese University in Hong Kong. Vidgop’s works were published in more than 30 countries, he is the author of several books.