He was born in Romania and in 1959 moved to Israel where he grew up in an agricultural cooperative, served five years in the Israeli military and received his BFA at Tel Aviv University. He has taught filmmaking and film studies at Tel Aviv University, Concordia University in Montreal and The New School University in New York. Dotan is fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and a member of the Writers Guild and Directors Guild of America. He presently teaches seminars on political cinema at New York University on both the graduate and undergraduate levels.