A Lifetime Member of the Actors Studio[6] and a graduate of the Canadian Film Centre's Directors Lab in Toronto, she is also a recipient of the award, Women in the Director's Chair Career Advancement Module 2010, in collaboration with Women in Film Festival Vancouver,[7] among many other honours.
[8] In interviews, Carter asserted that Passionflower was her own story, that her experience of her mother is "85 to 95 percent" of what is seen on the screen:[8][9]A lot of women at the time, an era of being perfect, staying in the home, repressed their anger from not being able to express themselves.
[8]It is not clear what form of mental illness Barbara Carter had: "Terms were thrown around, schizophrenic, manic-depressive.
"[11] Her father, however, was often at a loss when it came to her mother's moods, not knowing what to do; the young Carter became a "daddy's girl": "He thought he was being a great dad, but it set up this competition.
"[9] Carter moved to New York City after graduating with a degree in interior design from the University of Manitoba in 1976.
[6][21] With the support of the University of Winnipeg, Carter directed and completed her award-winning 35mm short One Night in the summer of 2009;[21] it screened at several international film festivals.
[20] Her feature projects were put on hiatus following the Rana Plaza Collapse on 24 April 2013, when Carter's husband, Brad Loewen, was given the responsibility of implementing the Accord signed by Western clothing manufacturers upgrading the safety features of 1600 Bangladeshi garment factories; they both moved to Dhaka in December 2013[24][25] for an expected five-year term.
[26] This led to Carter producing a short documentary, Rana Plaza: Let Not the Hope Die (2014), commemorating the one-year anniversary of the tragedy,[27] "to support his work".
[30] Carter's second feature (and fourth collaboration with Schnitzer), Before Anything You Say (2017) is an experimental domestic drama film about a couple struggling to maintain their love and marriage even as a life-altering decision threatens to tear them apart.
The film is once more partly autobiographical,[31] based on her feelings about her husband accepting the position which took him to Bangladesh: "he was gone and here I was, in the prairies, by myself, in the place he wanted to move to.
[33] Carter's third feature, Into Invisible Light (2018) is loosely based on characters from Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, specifically Yelena[34] and Dr.
[35] The story is about a recent widow re-examining her life and her identity in the wake of her husband's death, unexpectedly crossing paths with an old flame from her past, inspired to take up writing years after having given it up.
[34] Carter's fourth feature film is the romantic comedy Love, Repeat,[7] which premiered in New York City on 17 December 2019.
"[10] Looking back at her filmmaking career after the release of Before Anything You Say, Carter said she realized that her films were all "in some way" about betrayal and abandonment, and that this was "something really deep in me from my own childhood, coming up in different forms.
"[32] Carter's husband Brad Loewen and stepson Erik Friesen appear in a few of her films as a main cast member (Rifting/Blue)[18] or an extra (Passionflower).