Tamar Baruch was born in Israel to a Tunisian mother and an Iranian father. She earned a B.F.A. in film from the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University and from York University in Toronto, and an M.A. in documentary filmmaking at NYU as a Fulbright Fellow. Baruch has been nominated for an Israeli Academy Award (Ophir) and is a laureate of the Israeli Ministry of Culture's Early Career Film Award.
Baruch’s graduation film Gloria (2013) premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival winning First Prize. Gloria has since screened in dozens of festivals around the world, winning Amazon Most Promising Director Prize at the Montreal World Film Festival and an Honorable Mention from the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
Baruch was selected to participate in the Hebrew Poetry Adaptations, HaShever HaSuri-Afrika'i/The Syrian-African Rift Project of the Tel Aviv University. With this framework, she used the poem "Power of Attorney" (2014) by David Avidan as the inspiration for a short film she directed and presented at The Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival. Stranger of the Dunes (2017) is her third short film - it won First Prize at Nòt Film Festival (Italy) and was bought for distribution by the Giometti cinema circuit. Her most recent film is Her Name Was Zehava (2023).
During her time at MacDowell in 2019 she developed her debut feature film. In 2023, Tamar was at work on her documentary film about Zehava, a 22-year-old Palestinian trans woman who was a victim of attempted murder within her family and sexual trafficking. Zehava fled the West Bank but found herself ineligible to seek asylum in Israel, as Palestinians are excluded from this right under any circumstance.
