DARK Side of Baran bo Odar

Mavi Boncuk |Baran bo Odar  is a German film and television director and screenwriter. 

Baran bo Odar[1]was born in Switzerland in 18 April 1978, studied Directing at the University of Television & Film Munich. He has worked on several commercials, music videos and award-winning short films. His feature debut THE SILENCE (2010) premiered at the Piazza Grande in Locarno and gained him a spot as one of Variety’s Ten Directors to Watch in 2011. 

His next film WHO AM I was a German box office hit. Warner Brothers has closed a deal to remake WHO AM I. His first US movie was the action thriller SLEEPLESS starring Jamie Foxx and Michelle Monaghan which was released February 24th 2017. Together with Jantje Friese he is the showrunner of the NETFLIX Original Series DARK which was launched Dec 1st 2017 worldwide on Netflix in over 190 countries and is now one of the most watched series on Netflix. Currently Season 3 was released on Netflix.

His film Who Am I – No System Is Safe reached the top of the German cinema charts[1] and was nominated for German Film Awards for Best Fiction Feature Film and Best Screenplay. Odar directed and co-wrote the film with his partner Jantje Friese. Odar was born in Switzerland and is of Turkish origin from his mother and of Russian origin from his paternal grandfather, a former doctor who had to flee Russia after the October Revolution.[2] Bo is his nickname.

The TV series Dark, which Odar co-created with Friese, gained popularity worldwide and was Netflix's first German-language original series. Every episode is co-written by Friese, and directed by Odar.[3] Odar was honored with a Grimme-Preis, Germany's most prestigious television award, in 2018 for his direction in Dark season 1.[4] In 2019 Dark's second season was released and its third season announced.

[1] Bo Odar: I was born in Switzerland but my parents moved to Germany when I was two. Also, both my mother and father are not German or Swiss. My mother's side is Turkish and my father's side is more from Russia. "Baran" is, I think, almost a Jewish name, but again neither of my parents are Jewish. "Bo" is just a nickname and Odar is an invented name. My grandfather, who was a doctor, had to flee the Russian revolution because he was in the White Army and not the Red Army. When he had to flee, he lost his whole family. He faked an ID, and chose the name Odar because it means "doctor" in some other language.