Tamar Baruch is a writer-director whose work moves between documentary and fiction. Her film Her Name Was Zehava (2023), completed in residence at MacDowell, was made with Zehava, a Palestinian trans woman from the West Bank who fled to Israel after surviving sex trafficking and an attempted murder, but was denied asylum and repeatedly imprisoned. It won the International Documentary Association’s David L. Wolper Documentary Award and Best Documentary Short at the Haifa International Film Festival.
Her earlier films, including Gloria (2013), Power of Attorney (2014), and Stranger of the Dunes (2017), have screened internationally, winning the Amazon Most Promising Director Prize at the Montréal World Film Festival, First Prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival, and First Prize at Nòt Film Festival Italy, among others. She has been nominated for an Israeli Academy Award, is a laureate of the Ministry of Culture’s Early Career Film Award, and her work has been exhibited at Le Muséum de Toulouse in France.She holds an M.A. in documentary from NYU and a B.A. in film from TAU and York University.
