Amir Bar-Lev (Producer/Director)

My Kid Could Paint That is Amir Bar-Lev’s second feature film. His directorial debut, Fighter (2001) was named one of the top documentaries of the year by Newsweek, The Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and several other major publications. It won 6 international awards, received “Two Thumbs Up” by Ebert and Roeper, and was called “Brilliant” by The New Yorker, “Enthralling” by New York Times, “Finniest film of the summer” by the New York Post and “one of the best documentaries of this year or any other by Rolling Stone. Fighter was released theatrically in the fall of 2001, and aired on the Independent Film Channel.

After Fighter and before beginning My Kid Could Paint That, Bar-Lev spent 4 years looking for a new project and working in television. He served as a creator and Executive Producer on several pilots, including Remix, a DJ competition show for SpikeTV, and VH1’s Party Crashing in Cannes, which saw his Fighter partner, Alex Mamlet (aka Kid Protocol) joining Nicole Kidman on the Cannes Film Festival’s famous red carpet. Bar-Lev also produced and helped develop VH-1’s Fabulous Life and the Weather Channel’s series, It Could Happen Tomorrow. The pilot episode focused on the hurricane danger facing New Orleans and was shot only a few months before Hurricane Katrina.

Bar-Lev has also directed several short films. Geoff Hoyle starred in Chris Donahoe: Independent Filmmaker, a faux documentary in the vein of independent filmmaking. New Orleans Furlough, a documentary short, captures a Louisiana National Guardsman as he returns from Baghdad to New Orleans nine days after Katrina.

Before directing, Bar-Lev was an AVID editor. As a teenager growing up in Berkeley, California, Bar-Lev’s first work in media was a liquid light show artist, where he work on light shows for Bill Graham Presents and The Grateful Dead. Bar-Lev graduated with double majors in Film (Modern Culture and Media) and Religious Studies from Brown University in 1994.

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