Tonia Mishiali

Tonia is a Cypriot writer/director and producer whose work focuses on social and women's issues. She is a member of the Hellenic and European Film Academies and the European Women's Audiovisual Network. She is Berlinale Talents alumna and co-artistic director of Cyprus Film Days International Festival, having also served as vice president of the Directors Guild of Cyprus. She has been on several film festival juries (Karlovy Vary, Off Camera) and a script reader for the Greek Film Centre. After many years of directing for television and theatre, Tonia fulfilled her dream and pursued her passion for filmmaking as a director and producer. Her short films, _Dead End (2013)_ (qv), _Lullaby of the butterfly (2014)_ (qv) and _I Don't Like the Wind, I Like the Sun (2020)_ (qv) have been officially selected in more than 100 international film festivals worldwide, including many prestigious and A-list ones like Locarno, Palm Springs, Sarajevo, Transilvania, Encounters, Busan, Drama and Cork, winning several awards for Best Director and Best Film. _Dead End (2013)_ (qv) is represented by the SND Films (NL) and has been sold to Asia, USA and Europe. Her debut feature _Pause (2018)_ (qv), a Cyprus/Greece co-production, is represented by Film Republic (UK) and has participated in cocoPITCH 2015 and in Karlovy Vary WIP 2017. It has been officially selected in more than 80 international film festivals, including Santa Barbara and Seattle as well as many FIAPF accredited 'A' list festivals, like Karlovy Vary, Sydney, Cairo, Stockholm, Sofia, Kitzbuhel and Transilvania. At the 2019 Sydney Film Festival, _Pause (2018)_ (qv) was selected for the European Film Promotion section "Europe! voices of women in film", at which films by Europe's ten most outstanding women directors were presented. _Pause (2018)_ (qv) received rave reviews internationally from the trades and other established media, including the Hollywood Reporter and LA times, and was listed one of "20 most daring films of 2019" by Rotten Tomatoes. PAUSE received 13 awards including the Fipresci Prize for Best Greek film by the International Federation of Film Critics at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and Best Film by the Greek Film Critics Association at the Panorama of European Cinema. It has also been nominated for "Best First-time Director" and "Best Actress" at the Hellenic Film Academy Iris 'Awards' (qv) 2019, while its screenplay is listed in the core collection of the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It has been released theatrically in USA and Europe, sold to many territories in Asia, while it also streamed on major platforms including Amazon Prime and HBO Europe. Tonia is now developing several projects under her production label Bark Like A Cat Films, which she launched in 2020 with the aim to support her own directing projects as well as daring films by filmmakers with an edge. These projects include her next directing projects and four other films by fellow filmmakers (shorts and features), all of which have been developed through and awarded at major markets and workshops (Crossroads, Coco, Sources2, Mediterranean Film Institute, Torino Film Lab, Torino Short Film Market, Euroconnection, Meetings on the bridge, Sofia Meetings, Midpoint, First Films First).::'Tonia Mishiali' (qv)