Samir Abdallah was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, to Egyptian modern art pioneer Hamed Abdallah and his Danish nurse wife. He has lived in France since the age of six, where he acquired French nationality.

After studying Drama and Cinema at the University of Nanterre in the early 1980s, he participated in the creation of the IM’Média Agency with his brother Mogniss, and produced numerous reports and documentaries on Immigration for the program Rencontres, on the French channel FR3, between 1988 and 1991. He has produced, alone or in collaboration, numerous documentaries, including: Islam in France, between traditions and modernity in 1990, The Revolt of Veaux-en-Velin in 1991, Journeys in the Land of the People, in 1991, The Ballad of the Undocumented in 1997, The Siege in 2002, Writers of the Borders, travels in Palestine(s), in 2004, Quo Va Dis?, in 2006, After the War, It’s Always War, in 2007, Gaza-strophe, Palestine, in 2009, Candidates for Arabs?, in 2012, In Revolutionary Cairo, since 2011…

In 1991, he founded L’Yeux ouverts, which organizes workshops in neighborhoods and leads an international network of public screenings of films expressing a critical point of view on the contemporary world. It has more than 3,000 partners, associations and organizations, in France, Europe, Arab countries, and the Americas. This network, called Cinemeteque, develops the film website of the same name.