artist author director

carmen baltzar (Helsinki / Lisbon) is a Finnish-Romani artist working across writing, film, performance and visual arts. Her work holds two sides of change: metabolizing impermanence and loss, and transforming reality, using persona and inherited memory. Her debut novel, carmen, is published in Finnish by Kosmos. She co-adapted carmen into the short opera love is a rebellious bird, which premiered at the Finnish National Opera in 2026. Her short film all the love in my body premiered in the international competition at Krakow Film Festival, and screens at Sarajevo International Film Festival, Helsinki Film Festival, Nordisk Panorama, and others. She holds a BSc in Psychology from City University London and an MA in Ethnographic and Documentary Filmmaking from UCL, and is a member of the European Film Academy and the Romani Filmmakers Network (RFN).