Joann Sfar

Joann Sfar was born in Nice in 1971 to a singer mother and a lawyer father.

He grew up in both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jewish culture, learning Hebrew and the precepts of the Torah, but attending public school. From an early age, and with the abundance that still characterizes him today, he invented and drew stories. By the age of fifteen, he was sending publishers one comic strip project a month, which they all turned down with equal regularity.

After earning a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Nice, he entered the Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he developed a passion for morphology. In 1993, he joined the Atelier Nawak, the future Atelier des Vosges, where he met Lewis Trondheim, David B., Jean-Christophe Menu, Emmanuel Guibert, Christophe Blain, Émile Bravo and Marjane Satrapi.

One fine month in 1994, three different companies offered to publish his work. His first album, “Noyé le poisson”, was published that year by L'Association. Since then, Joann Sfar has created a body of work of absolute originality. The depth of his stories never excludes humor or sensuality. His characters have the truculence of Albert Cohen's, and his pleasure in drawing is as infectious as Quentin Blake's. He's one of those people who has given comics a new lease of life.

After an animated series adapted from his “Petit Vampire” for France Télévision in 2004, he moved on to the cinema with the simultaneous “Gainsbourg vie héro” (Gainsbourg the Hero) which won 3 Césars in 2011, followed by the adaptation of his “Rabbi's Cat”, co-written with Sandrina Jardel and co-directed with Antoine Delesvaux, which won a César for best animated film.

Although he describes himself as a compulsive cartoonist who never goes a day without picking up his pencil, this adept of a lively line thrown down on paper is also an authentic writer and filmmaker. For this storyteller attaches as much importance to words as to images, equally at ease in front of his boards as in front of his computer screen or behind the camera.

His Hayom object:  Joann Sfar illustrated our 2025 edition of porcelain Seder Plates. Inspired by traditional Seder plates, he drew the ritual foods we eat during the Seder meal before adding a more personal touch with a sleepy kid (his son? the artist as a kid? your son?). His most famous character, the Rabbi's cat, also seems to be jumping into the Seder plate.