Baran bo Odar

Odar was born in Switzerland. He is of Turkish descent on his mother's side and has Russian ancestry from his paternal grandfather, a former doctor who fled Russia after the October Revolution.^[2]

Odar's first feature film, produced as a final project for his University of Television and Film Munich diploma, was Under the Sun (German: Unter Der Sonne), a sixty-minute coming-of-age story about a twelve-year-old boy who is infatuated with his older niece. It was screened at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2006 and Utah's Slamdance in 2007.^[3][4][5] For the film, Odar was awarded the Studio Hamburg Newcomer Award and the Munich Feature Film Award^[2] and was nominated for the Max Ophüls Prize.^[6]

Directing a Hollywood production had been a longtime dream of Odar's.^[7] Following the success in Germany of The Silence and Who Am I, Odar attracted the attention of American producers who were searching for a director for Sleepless, an action thriller to which Jamie Foxx was already attached.^[7] After Odar came on board, Michelle Monaghan was cast as Foxx's co-star, and the film was shot in Atlanta.^[7]

The TV series Dark, which Odar co-created with Friese, gained popularity worldwide and was Netflix's first German-language original series. Every episode was co-written by Friese and directed by Odar.^[8] Odar was honored with a Grimme-Preis, Germany's most prestigious television award, in 2018 for his direction of Dark's first season.^[9] In 2019, the second season of Dark was released. The third, and final, season followed in 2020.^[10]

Prior to the release of season 3 of Dark, Odar and Friese announced their next series, 1899.^[11] The first two episodes premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2022.^[12] The full season came out on 17 November 2022 on Netflix.^[13] The creators had ideas for two more seasons, but in January 2023, Netflix canceled the show.^[14]