About Varda Bar-Kar
Award-winning director Varda Bar-Kar was born in England to a South African mother and a Romanian father. By age ten, she had traveled and lived on three continents. Her international upbringing gives her a global perspective, deep appreciation, and love for diverse peoples and cultures. She is an “artivist” filmmaker who focuses her creative lens on meaningful stories exploring the breadth and diversity of the human condition. She faces society’s challenges with an uplifting approach that speaks to possibility.
Varda transitioned into directing after working as a Script Supervisor for maverick feature directors like Jim Jarmusch, Wayne Wang, and Carroll Ballard. She developed her directing voice by creating scripted short films, including the festival-winning Window starring Louis Gossett, Jr., which screened at Cannes and aired across the United States on local affiliate stations in honor of Black History Month.
Varda’s music documentary Big Voice garnered the “Best Premiere Documentary” award at the Heartland Film Festival, “Best Feature Documentary” at NewFilmmakers Los Angeles, and “Best Family Documentary” at the South Dakota Film Festival. Big Voice screened at the United States Capitol in advocacy of arts education, premiered on Netflix, and was broadcast on PBS, winning a Bronze Telly Award. Her documentary A Million Spokes spanned the state of Iowa. It required four unique mobile camera units, each following a select group of cyclists riding across the Hawkeye State in the world’s largest, longest, oldest bike tour.
Her music documentary Fandango at the Wall (HBO/MAX, Executive Produced by Carlos Santana and Quincy Jones) follows Maestro Arturo O’Farrill to Veracruz, Mexico. There, he meets the masters of a 300-year-old form of music called son jarocho (which combines indigenous, African, and Spanish traditions) and joins them for a transformational gathering of song and dance at the border between the United States and Mexico.
Fandango at the Wall spawned the Grammy award-winning album “Fandango at the Wall in New York.
Varda directed for the hit FOX show 9-1-1. Her episode entitled Buck, Actually (inspired by Love, Actually) explores the complexity of love and stars Angela Bassett, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Peter Krause. Varda was a consulting producer for the Netflix documentary Anna Nicole Smith: You Don’t Know Me. She is in the finishing stages of a new music documentary about the creative genius and unstoppable artistic spirit of multi-Grammy-winning American singer-songwriter Janis Ian. Executive produced by Pierre Hauser and produced by Varda Bar-Kar, Brooke Wentz, and Alessandra Pasquino, the film features Janis Ian, Lily Tomlin, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Tom Paxton, Jean Smart, Laurie Metcalf, among others. She was recently commissioned to write and direct a documentary for the PBS SoCal series Artbound.
Varda’s films have received grants from The Ford Foundation, Jewish Story Partners, Rainin Foundation Discretionary Fund, and The Miranda Family Foundation. She is also a beneficiary of the Ryan Murphy’s Half Foundation Director Mentee Program, the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency, and the Jewish Film Institute Residency. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the International Documentary Association (IDA), and Film Fatale.
During breaks from her filmmaking adventures, Varda enjoys swimming, biking, hiking, making art, reading, hanging with friends, and exploring the world with her husband, Patrick Scott Bennett, and their grown daughters, Paloma and Raven.