Zara Balfour
Founder & Head of Production
Zara Balfour is an award-winning director, producer, and writer with over 20 years’ experience in documentaries, drama, and branded content. A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a BAFTA and BIFA voter, she has been featured on BBC Woman’s Hour and BBC World.
Originally an actress, Zara moved behind the camera to work on a BBC Storyville documentary, beginning a career that has taken her to over 20 countries. She has captured human stories from disaster zones in Japan and China to community projects across Africa and South Asia, interviewing hundreds of people worldwide - from children and community leaders to politicians and celebrities.
Her debut feature documentary, Children of the Snow Land, won the BIFA Discovery Award, screened at 20 international festivals, and was broadcast globally. Zara was nominated as Breakthrough Producer by BIFA, and her short films have screened at Berlinale, London Film Festival, Telluride and Sarajevo.
Zara has directed and produced over 150 campaigns for clients including Mastercard, The BRIT Awards, Google, Xbox, and the UK Government, winning multiple Cannes Lions, Clios, and Webbys. She recently directed the award-winning drama Morning Star and was consulting producer on Terra Mater’s A Cheetah’s Pride for AppleTV+.
Zara has a passion for sustainability and films that create real-world change. She created NGO Snowland Journeys to turn film impact into lasting change, with Dame Joanna Lumley DBE as patron. To date, Snowland Journeys has reunited more than 65 Himalayan families.
As founder of Picture on the Wall Productions, Zara leads development and production, creating empathy-driven stories with social and environmental impact. With a focus on Life Stories that Change Lives, Zara is currently developing new documentary and drama projects with themes of happiness, health, environment and empathy.