Born to an Afghan father and a French-Swiss mother, Zahra Vargas (*1980, currently resident in Vevey, Switzerland) earned a Bachelor's degree in film from the HEAD Cinéma du réel - Haute école d'art et design in Geneva and also has a diploma in Film Photography Directing from the SICA (Argentinian Film Industry Trade Union) in Buenos Aires. From 2007 to 2011 she lived in Argentina and then Chile, where she set up an audiovisual studio called Kairos Studio, which produced works in various different fields such as sustainable development, architecture and anthropology (http://kairosworks.net). In 2010 she presented a video installation entitled 'Disconformidad / Disagreement' at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Santiago de Chile, and in 2014 she participated in a workshop in Nara with Naomi Kawase and directed 'Ame no ukihashi' (Floating Bridge of Hea¬ven). Her graduation film ‘La Fin d’Homère’ (Homer, a hunter's fate) was made with the collaboration of hunters from the Valais region. In 2015 she was selected by several international festivals such as Indielisboa, Entrevues de Belfort, Kurzfilmtage in Winterthur and the Clermont-Ferrand short film festival. In 2016 she featured in the Berlin Critics Weeks and the Munich Dokfest (winning the Megaherz Film School Award). In 2019 she spent four months in Buenos Aires shooting the feature film 'Azor' (CH/FR/ARG) by her colleague Andreas Fontana. She is currently working on developing her first feature film, entitled 'La Turba'.
Last update of this profile: 2020
