--- name: "Baran bo Odar" canonical: "https://film.one/person/baran-bo-odar" roles: ["Producer","Director"] born: "18 April 1978" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "producer" average_over: 0 updated: "2026-09-17T13:45:47.937806+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Baran bo Odar Producer and director. Born 18 April 1978 in Olten, Switzerland. ## Details - **Work:** Producer, Director - **Born:** 18 April 1978, Olten, Switzerland - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baran_bo_Odar, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2883803, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2171633/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/232959 ## Streaming the US now - **Netflix:** [*Dark*](https://film.one/tv/dark.md) (80) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Baran bo Odar > Baran bo Odar makes puzzle thrillers and shoots them dead straight: symmetrical frames, faces looked at head-on, a grey-green forest and a power plant on every horizon. With Jantje Friese writing, the puzzles are actually solved, and *Dark* is the proof. Watch where bo Odar puts a thing in the frame. The cave mouth in *Dark* sits in the dead centre of the picture, a black hole with the forest arranged around it. The cooling towers stand on every horizon. People are photographed from the front, level, held a beat longer than is comfortable, and the debt to Kubrick is plain. Then the cut: the same spot in the forest, or the same kitchen, in another year, with the wallpaper changed and the faces a generation younger. It is one trick, and across 26 episodes it never wore out. He trained in directing at the Munich film school from 1998 and met Jantje Friese there, which is the most useful fact on his CV. After shorts, commercials and music videos came *The Silence* (2010), a thriller, then *Who Am I* (2014), a hacker film about identity that did well in Germany and got him noticed abroad. *Sleepless* (2017), an American remake with Jamie Foxx, was his one studio job, and most critics found it a formulaic action film. Then the series: *Dark*, from 2017 to 2020, every episode directed by him and written with Friese, and *1899* (2022), which ended after a single season. *Dark* is the case for him and it is a strong one. Nikolaus Summerer shoots Winden's forest in a wet green that is nearly grey; Udo Kramer builds the past out of the same houses with browner wallpaper and a Walkman on the desk; Ben Frost's score is a low hum with a two-note pulse under it, like a clock that has stopped caring. Bo Odar once described the mystery serial's method as "many questions, a few answers, and when you give an answer you have to ask the next question straight away", and the rare thing about *Dark* is that eventually it stops asking and pays out. The first time the cutting matched a patch of forest to the same patch decades earlier, we felt the ground shift under the sofa, and it kept happening and we kept feeling it. What he does not do is people. Our review called the cast of *Dark* pieces on a board, and that is the standing charge against him: the pattern comes first, and nobody caught in it gets a happy ending, by his own account. Some German critics thought *Dark* too polished, too close to American television, and there is something in that, though the polish is what lets the trick work. The plainer worry is what happens when the pattern is not finished. *1899* stopped after one season, and a bo Odar puzzle is only worth anything once the last piece is in. So start with *Dark*, and start knowing you will be asked to keep a ledger. He will keep his side of it. Whether anyone lets him finish the next one is not in his hands. ## Biography Baran bo Odar is a German film and television director and screenwriter. He was born on 18 April 1978 in Olten, Switzerland, and studied directing at the University of Television and Film Munich, where he met his creative and romantic partner, Jantje Friese. Odar is known for co-creating the Netflix series *Dark* (2017–2020) with Friese, directing every episode, and for directing the films *The Silence* (2010), *Who Am I* (2014) and *Sleepless* (2017). He directed and co-created the series *1899* (2022) with Friese. *Who Am I* reached the top of the German cinema charts and was nominated for German Film Awards. Odar received a Grimme-Preis in 2018 for his direction of the first season of *Dark*. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, baranboodar.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Dark* (2017), Fi1m 80, Director, Executive Producer, Creator — [page](https://film.one/tv/dark.md) ## Complete filmography (9) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *1899* (2022), series, Executive Producer, Director, Creator - *Dark* (2017), series, Executive Producer, Director, Creator — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/tv/dark.md) - *Sleepless* (2017), Director - *Who Am I* (2014), Director, Writer - *The Silence* (2010), Director, Screenplay, Co-Producer - *Under the Sun* (2006), Director, Writer - *Quietsch* (2005), Writer, Director - *The Forest for the Trees* (2004), Assistant Director - *Struwwelpeter*, series, Executive Producer ## Gallery - ![Jantje Friese und Baran bo Odar beim Grimme-Preis 2018, am 13.04.2018 in Marl.](https://film.one/media/person/715393/gallery-7c99703ee64a.jpg) Jantje Friese und Baran bo Odar beim Grimme-Preis 2018, am 13.04.2018 in Marl. — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fd/AV0A2925_Jantje_Friese_und_Baran_bo_Odar_%28Dark%29.jpg/1280px-AV0A2925_Jantje_Friese_und_Baran_bo_Odar_%28Dark%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Baran bo Odar](https://film.one/media/person/715393/gallery-0f3c13157f47.jpg) Baran bo Odar — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/AV0A2925_Jantje_Friese_und_Baran_bo_Odar_%28Dark%29_%28cropped%292.jpg/1280px-AV0A2925_Jantje_Friese_und_Baran_bo_Odar_%28Dark%29_%28cropped%292.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Baran bo Odar beim Grimme-Preis 2018, am 13. April 2018 in Marl.](https://film.one/media/person/715393/gallery-c8034877a358.jpg) Baran bo Odar beim Grimme-Preis 2018, am 13. April 2018 in Marl. — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/AV0A2925_Jantje_Friese_und_Baran_bo_Odar_%28Dark%29_%28cropped%29_-_Baran_bo_Odar.jpg/1280px-AV0A2925_Jantje_Friese_und_Baran_bo_Odar_%28Dark%29_%28cropped%29_-_Baran_bo_Odar.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Udo Kramer, Jantje Friese, Baran bo Odar und Simone Bär (Dark) beim Grimme-Preis 2018, am 13.04.2018 in Marl.](https://film.one/media/person/715393/gallery-8bf7b919611a.jpg) Udo Kramer, Jantje Friese, Baran bo Odar und Simone Bär (Dark) beim Grimme-Preis 2018, am 13.04.2018 in Marl. — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/AV0A3040_Udo_Kramer%2C_Jantje_Friese%2C_Baran_bo_Odar_und_Simone_B%C3%A4r_%28Dark%29.jpg/1280px-AV0A3040_Udo_Kramer%2C_Jantje_Friese%2C_Baran_bo_Odar_und_Simone_B%C3%A4r_%28Dark%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) - ![Udo Kramer, Jantje Friese, Baran bo Odar und Simone Bär (Dark) beim Grimme-Preis 2018, am 13.04.2018 in Marl.](https://film.one/media/person/715393/gallery-873d2d280d96.jpg) Udo Kramer, Jantje Friese, Baran bo Odar und Simone Bär (Dark) beim Grimme-Preis 2018, am 13.04.2018 in Marl. — 9EkieraM1, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/44/AV0A3040_Udo_Kramer%2C_Jantje_Friese%2C_Baran_bo_Odar_und_Simone_B%C3%A4r_%28Dark%29_%28cropped%29.jpg/1280px-AV0A3040_Udo_Kramer%2C_Jantje_Friese%2C_Baran_bo_Odar_und_Simone_B%C3%A4r_%28Dark%29_%28cropped%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/baran-bo-odar