The Director

Tonia is a Cypriot director, screenwriter and producer who loves making films that deal with social and women’s issues. She is a member of the European Film Academy and the European Women's Audiovisual Network, Berlinale Talents alumna and co-artistic director of Cyprus Film Days International Festival, having also served as vice president of the Board of the Directors Guild of Cyprus.

Her short films DEAD END and LULLABY OF THE BUTTERFLY competed in more than 60 International Film Festivals together, including Locarno, Palm Springs, Cork, Busan, Dresden, Sarajevo, Encounters, Drama, also winning several awards for Best Director and Best Film. It’s represented by SND Films (Amsterdam) and has been sold to Japan, China, USA, Belgium, Russia, France, Greece and Cyprus. Her directorial feature debut PAUSE (2018), a Cyprus/Greece co-production, represented by Film Republic (UK) participated in Connecting Cottbus and Mannheim Meeting Place co-production markets, as well as Karlovy Vary Works-in-Progress. It had its world premiere at the 53rd Karlovy Vary International Festival and has been officially selected in more than 35 international film festivals, including Cairo, Leeds, Stockholm, Thessaloniki, Santa Barbara, Seattle, Glasgow, Sofia and Transilvania. The film was also selected in the EFP programme “Europe! voices of women in film” at the Sydney Film Festival 2019, where ten films by Europe’s most exciting women directors were presented. PAUSE also received multiple awards including the FIPRESCI Prize for Best film by the International Federation of Film Critics at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and it was also nominated for Best First-time Director and Best Actress at the Hellenic Film Academy Iris Awards 2019. It will be released theatrically in the US, Greece and Cyprus in 2019.

She is now developing her second and third feature films NALA AND STELLA and MOONSTRUCK, the latter of which won a special mention at the Scriptwriters Guild of Greece 2018 awards and was developed through Sources2 scriptwriting workshop with funding from the Cyprus Ministry of Education and Culture.