Liz Kaar is an independent filmmaker and editor based in Chicago. She has worked closely with Chicago's documentary powerhouse Kartemquin Films for the last decade, and most recently co-directed and edited Hard Earned, the company's six-part series about people living on low wages across the US, airing on Al Jazeera America. The series won a prestigious Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia Journalism Award in 2016 and was nominated for an IDA award. She is currently directing, producing, shooting and editing Stranded by the State, a web series and TV miniseries, about the human cost of the almost two-year Illinois budget impasse, the longest a state has gone without a budget since the Great Depression.

In the past, she edited and associate-produced the music documentary Andrew Bird: Fever Year, festival-favorite On Beauty, and was lead editor for the web series Veterans Coming Home. She also edited Kartemquin's Typeface and In the Game. Liz was Director of Post-Production at Kartemquin Films from 2008-2012, managing the department and ushering in the brave new workflow of card-based media. Liz has also produced and directed non-profit videos for such organizations as the CDC, Illinois Department of Public Health, and the Newberry Library. Fluent in Spanish, she tries to work in the language as much as possible. Her next project will be completing her film Threads about women engaged in a fair trade business together, connecting the mountainside communities of Guatemala to downtown Chicago.